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A 

Prisoner  of  War  in  Virginia 

1  864-5 

By 
George  Haven  Putnam 

Adjt.  and  Bvt-Major   176th  N.   Y.  S.  Vol.. 

George  Haven  Putnam 


U.  S.  Loyal  Legion,  December  7,  1910 


With  Illustrations 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New   York  and  London 
Cbe  fmicfterbocfeec  press 
1912 


N.  Y.  VoU. 


A 

Prisoner  of  War  in  Virginia 

1 864-5 


By 
George  Haven  Putnam 

Adjt.  and  Bvt.-Major   176th  N.  Y.  S.  Vols. 


Reprinted,  with  Additions,  from  the  Report  of  an  Address 

Presented  to  the  N.  Y.  Commandery  of  the 

U.  S.  Loyal  Legion,  December  7,  1910 


With  Illustrations 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 
New  York  and  London 
fmfcfcerbocfcer  press 
1912 


COPYRIGHT,  igia 

BY 

GEORGE  HAVEN  PUTNAM 


ttbe  ftnfcfcerbocfcer  preee,  flew 


Co 

MY  ARTIST  CHUM 

MAJOR  HARRY  VANDERWEYDE 

IN  MEMORY  OF   PRISON  DAYS  (AND  NIGHTS)   IN  LIBBY   AND  DANVILLE 


249494 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 

PAGE 


GEORGE  HAVEN  PUTNAM, 

ist  Lieut,  and  Adjutant,  I76th  Regt.  N.  Y.  S. 
Vols.,  September,  1864        .         Frontispiece 

MOSBY'S  CAVALRY 

RAIDING  A  QUARTERMASTER'S  TRAIN   .        .      5 

"  AND  SHERIDAN  FIFTEEN  MILES  AWAY  ! "         .      8 
LIBBY  PRISON,  RICHMOND 17 

MORNING  TOILET,   UNION    OFFICERS'    PRISON, 
DANVILLE,  VA.     WINTER  1864-65. 
From  a  sketch  made  at  the  time  by  Captain 
Harry  Vander  Weyde  ...  .41 


An  Experience  in  Virginia  Prisons 

During  the  Last  Winter  of  the 

War 


An  Experience  in  Virginia  Prisons 

During  the  Last  Winter  of  the 

War 

THE  following  record  of  my  sojourn  in  the 
winter  of  1864-65  in  Libby  and  in  Danville 
prisons  was  prepared  under  the  instructions  of  the 
Commander  of  the  New  York  Commandery  of 
the  Loyal  Legion  for  publication  in  the  volume  of 
Reports  of  the  Commandery.  Forty-eight  years 
have  elapsed  since  the  winter  here  described,  and 
I  cannot  undertake  to  say  that  my  memory  can 
be  trusted  for  all  of  the  details  or  incidents.  I 
have  no  doubt  that  these  will  be  open  to  correction 
on  the  part  of  comrades  who  may  have  shared  the 
experiences  of  those  strenuous  months.  I  can 
only  say  that  the  record  has  been  set  down  in 
good  faith,  and  may  be  accepted  as  possessing 
such  value  as  belongs  to  any  individual  experi 
ence  recalled  after  a  long  interval  of  years. 


:  •      •  The  Battle  of  Cedar  Creek 


My  experience  as  a  prisoner  in  Virginia  began 
on  the  1 9th  of  October,  1864,  a  day  made  famous 
by  Sheridan's  decisive  victory  at  Cedar  Creek. 
At  the  time  of  the  battle,  my  regiment,  which 
belonged  to  Grover's  division  of  the  iQth  Army 
Corps,  occupied  a  position  on  the  extreme  left 
of  the  line  that  had  been  assigned  to  the  corps. 
On  our  left,  the  field  sloped  down  to  the  Shenan- 
doah  Pike,  while  on  the  farther  side  of  the  pike, 
a  rising  ground  extending  to  the  flank  of  Massa- 
nutten  Mountain  was  occupied  by  the  8th  Corps. 
The  line  of  the  entire  army  faced  southward,  the 
only  direction  from  which  an  attack  seemed  to 
be  possible. 

It  was  difficult  in  any  case  to  believe  that  an  at 
tack  was  to  be  anticipated  even  from  so  persistent 
and  plucky  an  opponent  as  General  Early.  Within 
the  preceding  thirty  days,  Early's  army  had  been 
sent  whirling  through  Winchester,  and  had  been 
driven  back  from  its  works  on  Fisher's  Hill,  with 
a  serious  loss  of  men  and  of  guns.  It  seemed  cer 
tainly  very  unlikely  that  these  beaten,  tired,  and 
hungry  troops  could  venture  an  attack  upon 
Sheridan's  lines. 


The  Attack  7 

The  battle  of  Cedar  Creek  has  been  often  de 
scribed,  and  the  main  events  are,  of  course,  familiar 
to  all  of  my  readers  who  were  present  or  who  have 
kept  themselves  interested  in  the  record  of  the 
decisive  events  of  the  war.  My  individual  re 
lation  to  it  was  but  small,  as  I  was  "taken  posses 
sion  of"  during  the  early  hours  of  that  strenuous 
morning.  We  were  aroused  in  the  foggy  darkness 
by  the  sound  of  firing  across  the  pike  on  our  left. 
We  realised  that  something  was  wrong  with  our 
friends  in  the  8th  Corps,  but  it  was  impossible  to 
see  across  the  road,  and  during  the  first  hour  our 
understanding  of  what  was  happening  was  very 
confused.  In  falling  into  line  on  the  alarm,  we 
faced,  as  said,  to  the  south,  but  when  round  shot 
came  rolling  along  our  trench  from  across  the  pike, 
it  was  evident  that  the  attack  to  be  repelled  was 
to  come  from  the  east  or  from  the  southeast. 
Our  brigade  was  wheeled  to  the  left  so  as  to  face, 
or  nearly  to  face,  the  pike,  and  before  long  the  rest 
of  the  division  wheeled  in  like  manner,  forming  an 
extension  of  our  line.  A  field-battery  of  four  or 
six  guns  had  been  placed  a  little  in  advance  of  the 
position  of  my  regiment.  The  first  shots  across 


8  Save  the  Gun 

the  road  had  disabled  some  of  the  horses,  and  the 
men  had  dragged  in  behind  our  infantry  line  all 
of  the  guns  but  one.  A  brigade-commander  (I 
think  it  was  Colonel  Dan.  Macauley  of  the  nth 
Indiana)  called  from  his  horse  (and  it  is  my  memory 
that  at  that  hour  but  very  few  of  the  officers  had 
ventured  to  mount  their  horses)  for  men  to  go  out 
and  drag  in  the  last  gun.  A  group  of  us  started 
across  the  field,  but  just  as  we  went  forward,  Mac 
auley  received  a  shot  through  his  chest.  The  men 
in  the  line,  finding  that  the  "Butternuts"  were 
working  across  the  pike  to  the  north,  fell  back,  if 
I  understand  rightly  not  under  any  orders  but 
with  the  instinct  of  veterans  to  keep  themselves 
from  being  outflanked.  When  I  reached  the  gun, 
I  found  that  there  were  not  enough  men  with  me 
to  make  it  possible  to  move  the  piece  across  the 
rough  ground,  and  we  were  almost  immediately 
cut  off  by  an  intervening  line  of  the  enemy.  The 
slope  was  an  uncomfortable  resting-place,  as  for 
a  brief  time  it  was  receiving  a  scattering  fire  from 
both  sides.  We  lay  down  flat  on  the  rough  turf, 
and  while  I  was  not  even  at  that  time  a  large  man, 
I  remember  having  the  uncomfortable  feeling,  as 


Taken  Prisoner  9 

the  zip,  zip  of  the  balls  went  over  our  heads,  that 
I  was  swelling  upward  as  big  as  an  elephant.  We 
had,  however,  but  few  minutes  to  be  troubled  with 
this  phase  of  the  situation,  as  the  second  line  of 
the  enemy  soon  came  sweeping  across  the  road 
and  promptly  took  possession  of  our  little  group. 
I  was  the  only  officer  in  the  lot  and  I  think  there 
may  have  been  with  me  eight  or  nine  men.  As  I 
saw  the  advance  of  the  rebel  line,  I  had  hidden  my 
sword  in  a  cleft  of  the  rock.  It  was  a  presentation 
sword  bearing,  in  addition  to  my  own  name,  those 
of  the  company  officers  of  my  regiment,  and  I  have 
been  hoping  since  the  war  that  some  impecunious 
Southerner  would  be  interested,  for  a  proper  con 
sideration,  in  looking  up  the  owner;  but  I  have 
had  no  tidings  of  it.  I  had  in  my  belt  a  small 
Remington  revolver  and  without  thinking  the 
matter  out,  I  had,  in  place  of  disposing  of  the  pistol, 
taken  out  and  thrown  away  the  cylinder.  The 
first  "Butternut"  with  whom  I  came  in  contact 
was  a  little  excited;  I  think  he  must  have  gotten 
hold  of  a  drop  of  8th  Corps  whiskey.  He  took  the 
pistol  from  my  belt,  and  as  long  as  he  held  it  up 
straight  in  front  of  him,  he  was  quite  pleased  with 


io  A  Difference  of  Opinion 

his  acquisition.  When  on  turning  it,  however, 
he  discovered  the  absence  of  the  cylinder,  he  was 
a  very  mad  "reb"  indeed.  He  brought  up  his 
Enfield  with  an  imprecation  and  ordered  the 
"damned  little  Yank"  to  find  that  cylinder.  I 
was  naturally  not  very  much  interested  in  meeting 
his  wishes  excepting  for  the  purpose  of  getting  rid 
of  the  threatening  Enfield,  and  I  had  given  the 
cylinder  a  miscellaneous  chuck  and  should  not 
have  known  where  to  look.  Fortunately  one  of 
his  officers  was  within  reach  and,  knocking  down 
his  piece,  sent  him  to  the  front,  while  myself  and 
the  men  with  me  were  taken  across  the  creek 
to  be  placed  with  the  prisoners  that  had  been 
gathered  in  a  little  earlier  from  the  camp  of  the 
8th  Corps. 

In  the  course  of  an  hour  or  so,  these  prisoners, 
aggregating,  I  think,  ten  or  eleven  hundred,  were 
stood  up  in  line,  and  certain  non-commissioned 
officers,  delegated  for  the  purpose,  "  went  through  " 
each  individual  of  the  line  with  a  thoroughness 
and  precision  that  indicated  previous  practice. 
They  took  possession  of  overcoats,  blankets,  and 
the  contents  of  our  pockets — money  as  far  as  we 


Appropriations  1 1 

had  any,  watches  and  knives;  they  also  took  what 
under  the  circumstances  was  the  most  serious  loss 
for  men  who  had  a  long  march  before  them,  our 
shoes.  I  was  pretty  well  down  on  the  left  of  the 
line  and  some  time  before  my  turn  was  reached 
I  was  able  to  note  what  were  the  articles  that  were 
being  appropriated.  I  realised  that  a  considerable 
march  had  to  be  made  and  I  was  not  at  all  happy 
at  the  idea  of  being  obliged  to  do  my  tramping 
without  shoes  or  with  the  fragmentary  apologies 
for  shoes  that  the  "rebs"  were  chucking  back  to 
the  Yankees  in  exchange.  I  took  my  knife  and 
made  some  considerable  slashes  in  the  uppers  of 
my  shoes.  The  result  was  that  they  were  not 
considered  worth  appropriating  and  they  fortun 
ately  held  together  during  the  march  and  for  some 
time  thereafter.  The  only  other  man  in  the  line, 
as  far  as  I  noticed,  who  saved  his  shoes  was  a  young 
staff -officer  of  the  6th  Corps,  Lieutenant  Vander- 
Weyde.  I  had  observed  the  youngster  before  be 
cause  he  had  small  feet  and  wore  patent  leathers 
with  which  he  seemed  to  be  well  satisfied.  I  .re 
membered  hearing  some  of  our  boys  throwing  out 
jeers  at  "pretty  little  patent  leathers"  as,  a  day 


12  My  Chum  VanderWeyde 

or  two  earlier  he  had  ridden  through  our  camp. 
The  smallness  of  his  feet  saved  for  him  his  pretty 
boots.  These  were  taken  off  two  or  three  times 
by  the  examiners  but  no  one  was  able  to  put  them 
on,  and  with  a  half-indignant  good  nature,  the 
last  examiner  threw  back  the  articles  with  the 
words,  "Here  Yank,  you  can  keep  your  damned 
pretty  little  boots."  As  far  as  I  can  remember, 
VanderWeyde  had  the  only  decent  looking  boots 
to  be  seen  that  winter  in  my  division  of  the  prison. 
We  remained  under  guard  in  a  field  to  the  south 
of  the  Cedar  Creek  bridge  until  two  in  the  after 
noon.  We  were  out  of  sight  of  the  lines  on  which 
the  fighting  was  being  conducted,  but  we  realised 
that  our  men  must  have  been  driven  back  and  that 
Early's  force  was  in  close  pursuit,  because  the 
sound  of  the  firing  had  gone  off  far  to  the  north 
ward.  Between  twelve  and  two,  there  had  been 
a  lull  or  else  the  firing  was  so  far  distant  that  it  no 
longer  reached  our  ears.  A  little  after  two,  there 
was  a  revival  of  the  sound  of  musketry  and  we 
thought  it  was  coming  our  way.  The  impression 
that  there  might  be  some  change  in  the  condition 
of  affairs  was  strengthened  by  our  being  hurried 


March  of  the  Prisoners  13 

into  a  column  of  march  and  started  along  the  pike 
southward.  Our  hosts  had  forgotten  to  give  us 
any  mid-day  meal  and  most  of  us  had  not  had  time 
for  any  breakfast  before  getting  into  fighting  line 
in  the  early  morning,  so  that  we  were  rather  faint 
for  a  hurried  tramp.  During  one  of  the  short 
rests  that  had  to  be  allowed  to  tired-out  men  in 
the  course  of  the  afternoon,  our  brigade  dog  who 
had,  very  unwisely  for  himself,  followed  the  line 
of  march,  was  taken  possession  of  by  some  hungry 
men  and  a  little  later  on  one  of  my  own  group  was 
good  enough  to  give  me  a  hurriedly  toasted  chunk. 
I  do  not  know  how  I  should  have  been  able  to  hold 
up  for  the  afternoon  if  it  had  not  been  for  my  share 
of  the  dog. 

While,  on  the  ground  of  our  being  hurried  south 
ward,  we  were  somewhat  encouraged  about  the 
final  outcome  of  the  battle,  it  was  not  easy  to 
believe  that  what  had  seemed  in  the  early  morning 
to  be  so  thorough  a  defeat  could  have  been  changed 
into  a  victory.  In  fact,  it  was  weeks,  before, 
through  the  leakage  of  news  into  the  prison,  we 
got  knowledge  of  the  actual  outcome  of  the  day. 
In  the  course  of  the  evening,  our  guards  remem- 


14  A  Break  for  Liberty 

bered  to  scatter  among  us  a  little  hardtack  taken 
from  one  of  our  own  commissary  waggons,  but  the 
ration  was  very  small  for  the  amount  of  marching 
that  had  to  be  done  with  it.  Sometime  before 
midnight,  in  company  with  VanderWeyde  with 
whom  I  had  fallen  into  "chumming"  relations, 
I  made  a  break  for  liberty.  We  remembered  the 
region  through  which  we  had  marched  not  long 
before  as  "ruthless  invaders,"  and  it  was  our  idea 
to  strike  for  a  dry  ditch  which  was  on  the  farther 
side  of  a  field  adjoining  the  road.  We  bolted  just 
behind  the  nearest  guard  and  took  him  so  far  by 
surprise  that  his  shot  and  that  of  the  guard  next 
in  line  did  not  come  near  enough  to  be  dangerous, 
and  we  succeeded  in  tumbling  into  the  ditch 
which  we  found  unfortunately  to  be  no  longer  dry. 
There  was,  in  fact,  an  inch  or  two  of  water  in  the 
bottom.  There  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  lie  quiet 
and  wait  until  the  column  of  prisoners  and  guards 
had  passed.  We  were  disappointed,  however,  to 
find  that  the  sound  of  the  marching  continued  for 
an  indefinite  period ;  and  in  fact  pretty  soon  there 
were  added  to  the  tramp  of  feet  sounds  from  a 
long  series  of  wheels.  It  was  evident  that  the 


At  the  Bottom  of  the  Ditch         15 

trains,  or  such  of  the  waggons  as  remained  of  the 
trains,  were  being  moved  southward.  Then  there 
came  a  rumble  which  seemed  like  that  of  field- 
guns.  While  we  were  puzzling  in  our  minds  as 
to  whether  the  whole  army  could  really  be  on  the 
retreat,  the  question  was  answered  in  a  most  un 
satisfactory  fashion.  Not  only  were  Early's 
troops  marching  southward  but  they  were  going 
with  such  urgency  that  the  road  was  not  sufficient 
for  their  purpose.  They  were  straggling  into  the 
fields  on  both  sides,  and  a  group  of  two  or  three, 
too  tired  and  too  sleepy  to  watch  their  steps, 
tumbled  into  our  ditch  on  top  of  us.  They  said 
things  and  so  did  we.  Our  state  of  mind  was  in 
fact  like  that  of  South  Carolina  three  years  earlier; 
we  only  wanted  to  be  let  alone.  But  that  privilege 
was  not  granted  to  us.  We  were  hustled  out  of 
the  ditch,  chilled  and  out  of  temper  at  our  failure 
and  at  what  seemed  to  us  the  unnecessarily  rough 
treatment  of  our  new  captors.  We  were,  so  to 
speak,  butted  back  into  the  road  and  hustled 
along  from  group  to  group  until  in  the  early  hours 
of  the  morning  we  found  ourselves  again  in  the 
column  of  prisoners.  I  understood  later  that  our 


16  Recaptured 

cavalry  had  pursued  that  column  through  a  large 
part  of  the  night  and  we  must  have  done  pretty 
lively  marching  to  keep  ahead  of  them,  but  the 
horses  doubtless  were  tired  on  their  part. 

It  is  my  memory  that  the  tramp  to  Stauntori 
took  the  better  part  of  three  days.  I  recall  our 
arrival  in  early  morning  in  the  main  street  of  the 
little  town,  at  breakfast  time  or  at  what  seemed  to 
us  ought  to  be  breakfast  time.  The  prisoners 
were  huddled  into  a  little  square  in  front  of  the  inn 
and  we  were  near  enough  to  hear  the  sound  of  the 
rebel  officers  at  breakfast.  I  think  we  could  take 
in  the  pleasant  smell  of  the  ham  and  eggs.  After 
what  seemed  to  us  a  very  long  wait,  the  commis 
sary  came  out  on  the  little  balcony  of  the  hotel 
with  some  assistants  bearing  a  few  boxes  of  hard 
tack.  These  boxes  were  thrown  over  from  the 
balcony  into  the  square  in  such  fashion  that  they 
broke  as  they  fell  and  the  officers  on  the  balcony 
enjoyed  the  spectacle  of  the  prisoners  scrambling 
for  their  breakfast.  Later  in  the  day,  we  were 
put  into  box  cars  and  started  on  the  journey  for 
Richmond.  There  was  but  a  single  track  and  our 
train  was  switched  frequently  to  allow  of  the  pass- 


rt    vo 
>    oo 


§  = 

I! 
1 


Hotel  de  Libby  19 

ing  of  passenger  trains  and  supply  trains,  so  that 
our  progress  to  Richmond  was  slow.  The  officers 
were  marched  across  the  town  to  Libby  Prison 
where  the  captain  of  our  guard  secured  a  receipt 
for  us  from  Sergeant  Turner,  while  the  men  were 
taken  over  to  Belle  Isle. 

The  first  of  the  prison  functions  was  the  strip 
ping  of  every  man  to  the  skin  for  the  purpose  of  a 
further  appropriation  of  any  valuables  that  he 
might  have  succeeded  in  concealing.  In  this  fresh 
search,  I  lost  $150,  that  I  had  sewn  into  the  inside 
of  my  shirt.  The  moneys  that  had  been  saved  by 
a  few  of  the  officers  after  the  first  search  were, 
with  hardly  an  exception,  taken  possession  of  at 
the  second  examination. 

We  were  interested  to  see  the  adjutant  of  the 
prison  noting  down  in  a  little  memorandum  book 
the  sums  taken  from  each  man.  "It  will  be  all 
right,  gentlemen,"  he  said  reassuringly,  "these 
moneys  will  of  course  be  returned  to  you."  This 
ceremony  completed,  we  were  shown  into  the 
general  living  room  on  the  top  floor  of  the  Libby 
building.  It  is  my  memory  that  at  this  time, 
October,  1864,  the  prison  was  full,  but  not  crowded. 


20    Our  Money  Placed  "In  Safety" 

Floor  space  was  made  for  us  under  the  supervision 
of  one  of  our  own  officers  who  took  upon  himself 
the  responsibilities  of  what  might  be  called  quarter 
master's  duties.  At  our  request,  VanderWeyde 
and  myself  were  given  floor  space  together,  and 
we  then  took  an  account  of  our  joint  property. 
I  had  picked  up  en  route  (I  do  not  recall  where) 
a  small  piece  of  blanket  and  I  had  also  succeeded 
in  retaining  a  broken  pocket-knife.  My  chum  had 
a  tin  cup  and  a  pocket-comb.  These  things  were 
held  in  common.  As  personal  appurtenances  we 
had  been  fortunate  enough  to  save  our  tooth 
brushes  which  the  examining  sergeant  had  not 
considered  worth  appropriating,  and  my  chum, 
who  was  a  clever  artist,  had  also  been  able  to  retain 
possession  of  a  pocket  sketch-book  and  a  pencil. 
These  tooth-brushes  later  became  noteworthy. 
It  is  my  memory  that  there  were  not  more  than  a 
dozen  or  so  among  about  350  officers.  The  pos 
sessors  placed  their  tooth-brushes  through  the 
button-holes  of  their  blouses ;  partly  because  there 
was  no  other  safe  or  convenient  storage  place,  and 
partly  perhaps  to  emphasise  a  sense  of  aristocratic 
opulence.  We  became  known  as  the  "  tooth- 


No  More  Blockade-Running        21 

brush  brigade."  My  chum,  with  some  protest 
from  me  against  the  using  up  of  my  knife,  did  some, 
artistic  carving  on  the  handle  of  his  brush,  pro 
ducing  with  no  little  skill  a  death's-head  and  a 
skeleton.  Late  in  the  winter,  when  we  had  been 
moved  to  Danville,  one  of  the  officers  of  the  guard 
offered  me  for  my  brush  $300,  of  course  in  Con 
federate  currency.  I  expressed  a  little  surprise 
that  the  article,  no  longer  new,  should  have  such 
selling  value,  and  he  began  to  reply,  "Well,  but 
you  see  now  we  cannot  get  any  more,"  and  then 
checked  himself.  The  word  "now"  emphasised 
itself  in  my  ear,  and  connecting  this  with  certain 
rumours  that  had  already  leaked  into  the  prison, 
I  realised  that  Wilmington  must  have  fallen 
and  that  no  more  tooth-brushes  or  other  supplies 
from  England  could  be  secured.  But  this  is,  of 
course,  advancing  in  my  narrative. 

In  Libby,  as  later  in  Danville,  the  prisoners, 
comprising  as  said,  only  commissioned  officers, 
maintained  an  organisation  and  ordinary  disci 
pline.  We  accepted  as  authoritative  the  orders  of 
the  senior  officer  in  the  prison,  and  this  officer  as 
sociated  with  him  two  or  three  men  who  divided  up 


22  Prison  Rations 

between  them  responsibilities  for  keeping  order, 
for  assigning  quarters,  for  adjusting  difficulties,  etc. 
Our  general  went  through  the  form,  and  it  was  not 
much  more  than  a  form,  of  appointing  on  his  staff 
a  commissary.  It  was  the  duty  of  this  officer  to 
receive  from  the  prison  sergeant  the  daily  ration 
and  to  arrange  for  an  equitable  distribution  of  such 
ration  among  the  prison  messes.  We  had,  for  the 
convenience  of  such  distribution,  been  divided 
into  groups  of  six  or  eight.  The  so-called  commis 
sary  had,  of  course,  nothing  to  issue  but  the  ration 
that  was  brought  in.  His  office  reminded  me  of 
the  description  given  by  the  young  showman  in 
the  menagerie,  "this  is  the  jackal  what  perwides 
for  the  lion  always  perwiding  that  there  is  anything 
to  perwide."  The  Libby  ration  in  these  last 
months  of  1864  comprised  soup  made  out  of  in 
conspicuous  little  beans,  and  a  chunk  of  corn  bread. 
During  the  close  of  our  sojourn  in  Libby,  the  soup 
part  was  cut  off  and  the  ration  reduced  itself  to 
the  corn  bread.  The  corn  bread  as  baked  was 
marked  out  into  squares,  but  for  some  reason  which 
I  never  had  explained  to  me,  each  square  of  corn 
bread  was  a  ration  not  for  one  but  for  two.  The 


4 'With  or  Without"  23 

messes,  therefore,  were  subdivided  into  pairs  and 
the  chums  had  to  arrange  between  themselves  each 
morning  for  the  division  of  the  flat  chunk  into  two 
portions.  My  chum  and  myself  took  turns  in 
cutting  that  chunk  into  two  pieces.  On  one  piece 
was  laid  the  broken  knife  and  the  man  who  had 
done  the  cutting  then  called  to  the  other  fellow, 
who  stood  with  his  back  to  the  cake,  to  say  whether 
he  would  have  it  " with "  or  "without "  (the  knife). 
Whichever  piece  one  got,  the  other  always  looked 
a  little  bigger.  We  regretted  to  part  with  the 
black  bean  soup,  although  we  had  not  been  fond 
of  it.  It  contained  about  as  many  bugs  as  there 
were  beans,  the  taste  was  abominable,  and  the 
nourishment  probably  slight.  I  understood  later 
when  I  was  on  parole  in  Richmond,  that  the  beans 
and  corn-meal  issued  to  the  prisoners  had  been 
rejected  by  the  commissaries  as  unfit  for  their 
own  troops.  I  should  not  venture  to  estimate 
with  any  precision  the  size  or  the  weight  or  the 
chunk  of  corn  bread  which  came  to  us  once  a  day. 
My  memory  is,  however,  quite  clear  on  the  point 
that  it  was  absurdly  small.  Some  of  us  went 
through  the  form  of  cutting  our  chunk  into  three 


24      Difficulties  of  the  Commissariat 

pieces  with  the  idea  that  we  would  make  three 
meals  out  of  it;  but  it  was  very  difficult  to  avoid 
eating  up  the  three  meals  within  the  first  hour 
even  though  we  knew  that  we  should  have  to  wait 
until  eleven  o'clock  the  next  morning  for  another 
chunk.  Large  or  small,  the  chunk  was  not  even 
nourishing  throughout.  The  cake  as  baked  con 
tained  other  things  besides  corn-meal.  Pieces  of 
the  corn-cob  were  ground  up  indiscriminately  and 
we  also  found  in  the  cake  cockroaches  and  other  in 
sects  and  occasionally  pieces  of  mice  that  had  lost 
their  way  in  the  meal-bins.  In  reply  to  complaints 
that  were  from  time  to  time  submitted,  the  prison 
officers  had  nothing  to  say  but  that  it  was  the  best 
they  had  and  that  the  Yankees  had  better  be  thank 
ful  that  they  got  anything.  I  judge  that  by  De 
cember  9,  1864,  it  must  have  been  a  very  difficult 
task  indeed  for  the  rebel  commissary-general  to 
secure  by  his  two  lines  of  single  track  roads,  one 
of  which  was  from  time  to  time  being  cut  by  our 
raiders,  sufficient  food  to  supply  the  army  and  the 
townspeople.  It  was  not  surprising  that  the  fare 
remaining  for  the  prisoners  should  have  been 
inconsiderable  in  amount  and  abominable  in 


Sleeping  Accommodations          25 

quality.  The  stupid  brutality  of  the  whole 
business  was  in  keeping  prisoners  at  all  in  Rich 
mond  during  the  last  winter  of  the  war;  for  that 
stupidity  which,  as  it  meant  the  loss  of  many  lives, 
may  fairly  be  described  by  the  simpler  word  of 
murder,  the  responsibility  must  rest  with  Jefferson 
Davis,  Commissioner  Ould,  and  General  Winder. 
The  abiding  place  through  the  night  and  through 
the  greater  part  of  the  day  was,  as  said,  the  strip 
of  floor  allotted  to  each.  It  is  my  memory  that 
at  this  time  Libby  was  not  so  crowded  but  that 
each  man  could  have  the  advantage  of  putting  his 
head  back  against  the  wall.  Later,  when  we  were 
transferred  to  Danville,  the  arrangement  of  space 
required  four  rows  of  sleepers,  two  with  their  heads 
to  the  wall  and  two  with  their  heads  to  the  centre. 
The  wall  spaces  were,  of  course,  in  demand.  At 
the  point  of  the  wall  in  Libby  where  my  own  head 
rested  (more  or  less  restlessly)  I  found  scratched 
(apparently  with  the  point  of  a  nail)  on  the  two 
or  three  bricks  the  names  of  previous  occupants 
of  the  quarters,  names  representing  in  most  cases 
men  who  had  "  joined  the  majority."  I  naturally 
added,  in  order  to  complete  the  record,  my  own 


26  The  Bricks  of  Libby 

name  on  a  brick  a  corner  of  which  was  still  frre. 
Some  years  after  the  war,  a  correspondent  wrote 
to  me  from  Richmond  that  he  could  if  I  wished  send 
me  this  autographed  brick  in  consideration  of  the 
payment  of  $5.00.  As,  however,  there  would  have 
been  no  difficulty  in  scratching  my  name  on  another 
brick,  I  did  not  think  the  purchase  worth  while. 
That  brick  and  its  companions  are  now  resting 
somewhere  in  Ashtabula  County,  Ohio.  Some  of 
you  will  recall  that  the  Libby  building  was  pur 
chased  by  some  speculators  to  be  put  up  in  Chicago 
for  exhibition.  It  was  a  stupid  plan,  for  the  his 
toric  interest  of  the  building  was  properly  to  be 
connected  with  its  location,  and  there  was  some 
thing  repellent  in  the  thought  of  using  as  a  show 
place  a  structure  which  represented  so  much  of 
pathetic  tragedy.  I  was  myself  not  at  all  dis 
pleased  to  learn  that  the  train  carrying  the  timbers 
and  the  bricks  of  Libby  had  been  wrecked  at 
Ashtabula,  and  the  materials  scattered  over  the 
surrounding  fields.  The  timbers  were,  I  believe, 
finally  taken  to  Chicago,  but  I  understood  that  in 
place  of  going  to  the  labour  of  picking  up  the  scat 
tered  bricks,  they  utilised  in  reconstructing  the 


Flashes  from  Our  Guns  27 

building,  old  bricks  available  in  Chicago.  Whether 
or  not  they  undertook  to  replace  the  scratched 
names  of  the  dead  veterans  I  do  not  know. 

The  ship-chandlery  of  William  Libby  &  Son 
was,  as  we  all  know,  placed  close  to  the  edge  of  the 
James  River,  so  that  goods  could  be  landed  directly 
on  the  Libby  pier.  Looking  across  the  river  from 
the  back  windows  of  the  prison,  we  were  able, 
during  the  nights  of  December,  to  see  from  time 
to  time  the  flashes  of  the  guns  from  the  lines  of 
the  Army  of  the  James.  We  used  to  make  our 
artillery  officers  study  out  the  line  of  fire  and  give 
us  their  opinion  as  to  whether  they  did  not  believe 
the  flashes  were  getting  nearer.  I  suppose  the 
distance  was  something  over  six  miles,  and  if  I  am 
wrong  in  this  calculation,  there  are  veterans  from 
the  Army  of  the  James  who  will  set  me  right. 

The  prison  had  by  this  winter  been  so  protected 
that  there  was  no  chance  of  any  further  attempts 
at  escape  by  tunnelling.  The  cellar  floor  through 
which  Rose  and  his  associates  had  dug  their  tunnel 
in  1863  had  been  masoned  over  and  under  the 
later  arrangement  of  the  guards  it  would  have 
been  impracticable  in  any  case  to  secure  admission 


28  The  Blood-hound  Guard 

to  this  floor  without  observation.  A  most  im 
portant  part  of  the  protection,  however,  was  given 
by  the  addition  to  the  prison  guard  of  a  magnificent 
blood-hound.  The  sergeant  marched  in  front  of 
the  guard  and  the  hound  in  the  rear,  and  looking 
from  the  prison  windows  we  could  see  him  cock 
up  his  eye  at  us  as  he  passed,  as  if  he  very  fully 
understood  the  nature  of  his  responsibilities. 
From  time  to  time,  the  hound  would  also,  either 
under  orders  or  possibly  of  his  own  motion,  make 
the  circuit  of  the  building,  sniffing  around  its 
foundations.  There  would  have  been  no  chance 
of  an  undiscovered  tunnel  while  that  dog  was 
within  reach.  I  had  trouble  with  that  dog  some 
months  later  when  I  was  on  parole  in  Richmond. 
I  had  been  told  that  the  intelligence  of  the  blood 
hound  enabled  him  to  be  taught  all  kinds  of  things, 
but  that  it  was  very  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
to  unteach  him  anything.  This  hound  had  been 
taught  "to  go  for"  anybody  wearing  blue  cloth. 
At  this  later  time,  I  had  secured  clean  clothes  from 
home  and  the  blue  was,  therefore,  really  blue 
instead  of  the  nondescript  colour  of  my  much-worn 
prison  garments.  I  had  occasion  from  time  to 


A  Sergeant's  Amusement          29 

time  to  go  to  Castle  Thunder,  where  the  dog  was 
kept,  and  the  sergeant  of  the  prison  guard  amused 
himself  by  putting  the  dog  on  a  long  leash  to  see 
how  near  he  could  get  to  the  little  Yankee  adjutant 
without  quite  " chawing"  him  up.  I  complained 
in  due  form  to  the  captain  of  the  guard  that  the 
jaws  of  the  hound  did  not  constitute  a  fair  war 
risk.  He  accepted  my  view  and  had  the  dog  put 
on  a  shorter  leash  so  that  I  was  able  to  get  past  him 
into  the  prison  door.  I  was  told  that  when 
Weitzel's  troops  entered  Richmond,  the  dog  was 
captured  and  was  later  brought  to  New  York  and 
sold  at  auction  on  the  steps  of  the  Astor  House. 
If  the  buyer  permitted  any  of  his  home  circle  to 
wear  army  blue,  there  must  certainly  have  been 
trouble. 

On  the  first  Tuesday  in  November,  it  was  de 
cided  to  hold  in  the  prison  a  presidential  election. 
I  may  admit  to  having  shared  the  doubt  expressed 
by  some  others  as  to  the  wisdom  of  the  attempt. 
There  was  among  the  prisoners  a  dissatisfaction, 
which  might  be  called  a  well-founded  dissatis 
faction,  at  the  way  in  which  they  had  been  neg 
lected,  or  appeared  to  have  been  neglected,  by 


30  Blocking  the  Exchange 

the  authorities  in  Washington.  At  this  time,  the 
exchange  had  been  blocked  for  more  than  six 
months  and  when  in  the  following  February,  ex 
change  arrangements  were  finally  resumed,  there 
had  in  fact  been  no  general  exchange  for  nearly 
twelve  months.  As  the  war  progressed  and  the 
resources  of  the  Confederates  were  diminished, 
it  was  impossible  for  them  to  make  appropriate 
provision  for  the  care  of  prisoners,  at  least  as  far 
as  the  prisons  of  Northern  Virginia  were  concerned. 
Even  if  there  had  been  an  honest  desire  on  their 
part  to  save  the  lives  or  to  protect  the  health  of  the 
helpless  men  for  whom  they  were  responsible,  the 
task  would  have  been  difficult;  but  it  was  quite 
evident  that  there  was  no  such  desire.  I  remember 
among  the  war  correspondence  that  is  in  print  a 
letter  from  Commissioner  Ould  to  President  Davis, 
written  in  the  winter  of  1864-65,  urging  the  policy 
of  a  prompt  renewal  of  the  exchange  arrangements. 
It  is  evident,  writes  the  commissioner  (I  am 
quoting  only  the  substance  of  the  letter  and  there 
fore  do  not  use  quotation  marks) ,  that  we  need  for 
our  depleted  ranks  all  the  fighting  men  that  can 
be  secured.  The  men  who  are  returned  to  us  from 


Old  Lamps  for  New  31 

the  Northern  prisons  are  for  the  most  part  able- 
bodied  and  fit  for  service ;  while  but  few  of  the  fel 
lows  that  we  should  send  North  in  the  exchange 
will  be  permitted  by  their  surgeons  again  to  handle 
muskets. 

I  realised  some  months  later  the  truth  of  Com 
missioner  Quid's  observations.  The  men  who 
came  out  of  Libby  and  Danville  in  February,  1865, 
were,  with  hardly  an  exception,  unfit  for  service. 
The  Confederates  whom  we  met  on  the  steamboats 
coming  to  Richmond  as  we  went  down  the  James, 
looked  to  be  in  good  working  and  good  fighting 
condition.  By  November,  1864,  the  mortality 
in  the  Virginia  prisons  had  become  serious.  The 
men  who  were  not  entirely  broken  down  were, 
through  lack  of  food  and  through  the  exposure  to 
cold  from  lack  of  clothing,  physically  discouraged 
and  depressed  although  they  did  maintain  for  the 
most  part  will  power.  I  could  not  but  fear,  there 
fore,  that  in  an  election  which  was  to  indicate  their 
approval  or  their  disapproval  of  the  management 
of  the  authorities  in  Washington  and  of  the  in 
action  in  regard  to  the  renewal  of  the  exchange, 
a  majority  of  their  votes  might  naturally  be  cast 


32  We  Re-elect  Lincoln 

against  the  re-election  of  Lincoln.  The  men  who 
had  planned  this  test  election  trusted  their  com 
rades,  and  their  confidence  proved  to  be  justified. 
When  the  vote  was  counted,  it  was  found  that  we 
had  re-elected  Lincoln  by  about  three  to  one. 
Years  afterwards,  I  learned  from  Robert  Lincoln 
that  the  report  of  this  vote  in  Libby  Prison,  reach 
ing  his  father  months  later,  was  referred  to  by  the 
President  as  the  most  satisfactory  and  encouraging 
episode  in  the  presidential  campaign.  His  words 
were  in  effect:  we  can  trust  our  soldiers.  The 
votes  had  of  course  no  part  in  the  official  count 
but  they  were,  as  Lincoln  understood,  important, 
as  showing  the  persistent  courage  and  devotion 
of  the  men.  My  own  ballot  would  in  any  case 
have  been  illegal  as  I  was  but  twenty  years  of  age, 
but  I  have  always  felt  that  it  was  on  the  whole 
the  most  important  vote  I  ever  cast. 

One  night  late  in  December,  we  had  an  inter 
ruption  which,  while  at  the  time  fatiguing,  gave 
ground  for  encouragement.  We  were  ordered 
up  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  were  hurried 
across  the  town  and  packed  into  box  cars  for 
Danville.  We  gathered,  from  the  exchange  of  a 


Hurried  Out  of  Richmond          33 

word  or  two  with  the  guards  who  permitted  them 
selves  to  talk,  that  there  was  a  scare  at  headquarters 
about  the  advance  of  our  lines.  The  journey  was 
exhausting  partly  because,  in  the  hurry  of  getting 
rations  for  us,  the  authorities  had  found  nothing 
more  convenient  than  salt  fish  and  the  train  was 
allowed  to  stop  but  seldom.  But  thirsty  and 
tired  as  we  were,  we  were  happy  with  the  thought 
that  perhaps  our  men  really  were  getting  into 
Richmond.  They  really  were,  but  it  took  five 
months  more  to  accomplish  the  task. 

We  had  quarters  assigned  to  us  in  Danville  in 
a  tobacco  warehouse,  the  windows  on  the  southern 
end  of  which  overlooked  the  River  Dan.  The 
view  from  these  windows  included,  in  addition 
to  the  river,  a  stretch  of  North  Carolina,  and  in 
the  far  distance  could  be  seen  the  hazy  outlines 
of  the  great  Smoky  Mountains.  These  mountains 
meant  to  us  more  than  a  bit  of  scenery;  we  asso 
ciated  with  them  the  possibilities  of  freedom.  It 
was  the  general  talk  that  if  a  man  could  make  his 
way  to  the  recesses  of  the  mountains,  and  that  if 
he  did  not  starve  or  freeze  in  the  wilderness,  and 
if  he  struck  the  right  kind  of  darkies  or  the  right 


34       The  Great  Smoky  Mountains 

kind  of  Southern  deserters,  he  might  possibly 
finally  get  through  to  our  lines.  A  few  men  did 
succeed,  as  I  will  relate  later,  in  getting  away 
from  Danville  Prison  and  several  of  them  tried 
the  great  Smoky  route.  As  far  as  I  could  learn 
from  later  reports,  but  two  succeeded  in  getting 
through.  The  others  were  lost  and  were  doubtless 
starved  or  frozen  in  the  wilderness.  As  it  was 
impossible  to  get  any  food  with  which  to  make 
the  start  and  as  the  army  blouses,  originally  not 
very  stout,  were  worn  threadbare,  and  as  the  ma 
jority  of  the  men  had  either  no  shoes  or  but  frag 
ments  of  shoes,  the  prospects  for  starving  or  for 
freezing  on  the  way  were  excellent. 

The  tobacco  warehouse  might  have  made  a 
fairly  comfortable  abiding-place  if  it  had  been 
properly  fitted  up  and  cared  for.  But  the  glass 
was  broken  from  many  of  the  windows,  and  Dan 
ville  lies  high  enough  to  give  many  cold  days  and 
many  still  colder  nights  in  the  months  of  winter. 
The  building  comprised  three  floors,  a  ground 
floor  and  two  upper  floors.  The  sojourning  of  the 
prisoners  was  restricted  to  the  two  upper  floors. 
The  lower  floor  was  used  merely  as  a  thoroughfare 


Quarters  in  Danville  35 

to  the  yard  and  for  the  water  parties  who  were 
permitted  once  or  twice  a  day  to  bring  water  from 
the  river.  It  was  the  duty  of  the  guard  who  pro 
tected  the  yard  and  of  his  fellow  who  patrolled 
the  lower  floor,  to  see  that  no  prisoners  were  per 
mitted  to  linger  either  in  the  yard  or  on  their  way 
back  to  their  own  floor.  Now  and  then,  in  fact, 
the  prisoners  were  subjected  by  impatient  guards 
to  some  very  annoying  hustling.  The  two  floors 
were  divided  so  that  by  the  beginning  of  the  winter 
there  were  about  two  hundred  on  each  floor.  I 
emphasise  at  the  beginning  of  the  winter  because 
as  the  months  rolled  on,  the  numbers  became 
smaller.  There  were  enough  vacancies  through 
death  to  give  space  on  the  floor.  At  the  outset, 
however,  the  men  were  arranged  in  two  rows  with 
their  heads  to  the  wall  and  two  rows  with  their 
heads  to  the  centre.  The  additional  comfort  of 
the  position  by  the  wall  was  to  some  extent  offset 
by  the  fact  that  it  was  nearer  to  the  cold  wind 
that  came  through  the  broken  windows.  The 
floors  were  dirty  as  we  took  possession  of  them 
and  they  became  dirtier  as  the  weeks  went  by. 
At  one  time,  we  essayed  a  petition  to  the  officer  of 


36          Exchanges  of  "  Property  " 

the  guard  for  hoes  with  which  to  scrape  off  the 
surface  of  dirt.  The  request  was  denied  on  the 
ground,  I  believe,  that  the  hoes  might  have  been 
utilised  as  weapons.  At  either  end  of  the  room, 
was  an  old-fashioned  stove  fitted  for  the  burning 
of  wood,  and  as  the  weather  grew  colder,  sleeping 
positions  near  the  stove  advanced  in  value.  Ex 
changes  of  berths  were  made  for  property  consid 
eration.  A  piece  of  blanket,  a  pair  of  shoes  more 
or  less  dilapidated,  or  a  pocket-knife,  constituted 
the  exchange  currency.  The  wood  for  the  stove 
was  brought  in  from  the  wood-pile  in  the  yard  by 
the  prisoners,  the  work  being  of  course  done  under 
guard.  The  supply  of  wood  was  kept  pretty  scant 
and  there  were  long  hours  when  the  fires  were 
out  and  when  our  application  for  permission  to 
bring  in  more  wood  received  no  attention.  It  is 
my  memory  that  in  Danville  the  daily  ration  was 
brought  down  to  the  corn  bread  alone.  There 
were  apparently  no  damaged  beans  available  and 
the  good  beans  that  were  fit  to  eat  must  have  been 
very  much  needed  in  Richmond.  Danville  was 
at  this  time  one  of  the  great  sources  of  supplies 
for  Lee's  army  at  Richmond,  and  the  one-track 


My  Artist  Chum  37 

road  was  very  fully  employed  with  the  trains  from 
the  South  bearing  to  Lee's  army  such  supplies  as 
were  still  to  be  secured  in  the  almost  exhausted 
Confederacy. 

My  selection  of  a  chum  proved  fortunate  in  one 
way  that  I  could  not  have  anticipated.  Vander- 
Weyde  was  clever  with  his  pencil  and  some  por 
traits  that  he  had  sketched  of  the  guards  attracted 
attention  not  only  in  the  prison  but  with  some  of 
the  officers  outside.  He  was  fortunate  enough  to 
be  invited  by  one  or  two  officers  who  had  homes  in 
town,  to  go  to  their  houses  and  to  sketch  wife  or 
daughter.  He  objected  properly  enough  that  his 
blouse  was  shabby  and  his  trousers  disreputable 
and  also  that  in  the  absence  of  soap  he  was  not  fit 
for  the  presence  of  ladies.  The  officers  wanted 
the  portraits,  and  the  result  was  that  the  fortunate 
VanderWeyde  secured  a  bath  with  real  soap,  and 
a  jacket  and  pair  of  trousers  that  held  together 
and  that  gave  him  in  the  midst  of  the  rags  with 
which  he  was  surrounded,  the  appearance  of  an 
aristocrat.  The  rags  discarded  by  the  swagger 
artist  enabled  me  to  do  some  very  important  patch 
ing  on  my  own  garments.  Further,  in  going  first 


38  Art  and  Hoe-Cakes 

to  one  house  and  then  to  the  other,  Vander- 
Weyde  had  the  opportunity  of  getting  something 
to  eat  and  finally,  and  that  is  where  I  came  in, 
he  was  thoughtful  enough  to  remember  to  stow 
away  in  a  pocket  a  couple  of  hoe-cakes  for  his 
chum.  It  was  VanderWeyde's  good  fortune  a 
few  months  later,  to  serve  on  the  staff  of  the  officer 
who  commanded  the  advance  brigade  of  the  troops 
taking  possession  of  Danville.  His  commander, 
knowing  of  his  prison  experience,  authorised  him 
to  receive  from  the  mayor  the  formal  surrender 
of  the  town.  VanderWeyde  had,  during  his  ex 
perience  as  a  working  artist,  been  a  guest  at  the 
mayor's  house  and  had  been  there  cared  for  by 
the  mayor's  wife.  He  had,  therefore,  an  additional 
motive  for  desiring  to  make  the  function  of  sur 
render  as  gentle  and  as  informal  as  possible.  He 
found  himself,  however,  received  by  the  mayor 
with  the  utmost  severity  and  with  not  the  slightest 
sign  of  recognition.  In  April,  1865,  the  mayors 
of  Virginia  towns  found  it  difficult,  and  it  was  quite 
natural  that  they  should  have  found  it  difficult, 
to  accept  any  social  relations  with  the  triumphant 
invaders. 


The  Songs  of  Prison  39 

While  the  occupations  of  the  day  gave  very  little 
opportunity  for  exercise,  we  found  ourselves  fairly 
sleepy  by  nightfall.  Either  by  some  general  con 
sensus  of  habit  or  possibly  as  a  result  of  orders 
from  our  commanding  officers,  we  got  into  the 
habit  of  turning  in  (a  mere  figure  of  speech,  of 
course,  as  we  had  nothing  to  turn  into)  at  about 
the  same  hour  and  all  together.  It  was  the  custom, 
after  we  were  all  recumbent  and  there  was  quiet 
across  the  floor,  for  two  or  three  of  the  men  who 
had  good  voices  and  good  memories  to  raise  a 
song  in  which  the  rest  of  us  joined  as  far  as  we  knew 
how  or  when  there  was  an  easy  chorus.  The 
songs  selected  were,  however,  mainly  of  the  quieter 
not  to  say  sadder  variety,  which  did  not  include 
choruses.  I  have  the  memory  that  the  songs  grew 
sadder  as  the  winter  wore  on.  We  began  jubi 
lantly  enough  with  Marching  through  Georgia  and 
other  verses  of  triumph  or  hopefulness,  but  in  the 
later  months  the  more  frequent  selections  were 
such  airs  as  Mother,  Will  You  Miss  Me?  Tenting 
on  the  Old  Camp  Ground,  and  Home,  Sweet  Home. 
As  the  lines  of  the  sleepers  thinned  ®ut  through 
the  winter  months,  the  doubts  evidently  increased 


40          Companions  of  the  Night 

as  to  the  prospects  for  any  further  triumphant 
marching  through  Georgia  or  anywhere  else  by 
our  lot  of  veterans.  Some  of  the  improvised  choirs 
had  memory  also  of  the  words  and  airs  of  psalms 
and  hymns  and  the  singing  of  these  constituted 
the  only  religious  exercises  of  which  I  have  memory. 
The  singing  went  on  until  from  the  commander's 
corner  of  the  room  came  the  word  "taps,"  after 
which  we  were  all  expected  to  be  quiet  and  to  get 
what  sleep  we  could. 

In  spite  of  fatigue  and  of  the  fact  that  we  were 
nearly  all  youngsters,  sleep  was  by  no  means  an 
easy  accomplishment.  The  floor  was  hard  and 
cold  currents  of  wind  coming  in  through  the  broken 
panes  made  it  chilly.  There  was  hardly  anything 
that  could  be  called  covering.  I  suppose  that 
among  the  350  men,  there  may  have  been  sixty 
or  seventy  scraps  of  blanket.  As  before  stated, 
the  overcoats  had  been  taken  together  with  a 
large  number  of  the  shoes,  so  that  shoulders  and 
feet  were  both  chilly.  Last  and  by  no  means  least, 
sleep  was  interfered  with  by  the  constant  irritation 
of  the  big  vermin  which  grew  bigger  as  we  grew 
smaller.  The  beasts  crawled  over  the  ground 


Wood  and  Water  43 

from  body  to  body  and  their  attacks  seemed  to 
become  more  aggravating  as  the  men  became  more 
emaciated.  By  daylight,  they  could  be  picked  off. 
and  the  first  occupation  of  the  morning  was  usually 
to  free  oneself  from  their  immediate  presence, 
but  in  the  darkness  there  was  nothing  to  be  done 
but  to  suffer  with  patience. 

It  was  not  easy  to  find  occupation  for  the  long 
hours  of  the  day.  In  the  earlier  weeks  of  the  winter, 
the  more  energetic  of  us  drew  lots  for  the  oppor 
tunity  of  making  the  trip  to  the  river,  a  hundred 
yards  or  so  away,  for  the  bringing  in  of  water. 
The  water  parties  comprised  from  six  to  eight  men 
who  were  watched  over  by  two  or  three  guards. 
Under  the  earlier  arrangement,  each  man  carried 
a  pail,  but  later  as  we  grew  weaker,  a  pail  full  or 
a  pail  half  full  was  more  than  one  fellow  could 
manage  and  the  routine  finally  came  to  be  for  two 
men  to  carry  together  a  pail  about  half  full  of 
water.  There  was  also  occasional  requirement 
for  parties  to  bring  in  wood  from  the  wood-pile 
but  in  this  luxury  we  were  sadly  stinted.  There 
was  for  a  time  some  activity  in  chess-playing. 
Two  groups  were  formed  at  either  end  of  the  room 


44  Story  Telling 

which  fought  out  with  each  other  in  a  series  of 
tournaments.  I  had  a  boy's  knowledge  of  chess 
which  was  much  strengthened  by  my  prison  ex 
perience  with  older  men.  It  is  my  memory  that 
the  chess  champion  of  the  prison  was  Captain 
Mason  who  is  at  this  time  (December,  1910), 
Consul- General  in  Paris.  Our  chess-boards  were 
made  out  of  a  couple  of  pieces  of  plank  which  we 
had  been  permitted  to  secure  from  the  guard-house, 
and  the  squares  on  which  had  been  marked  out 
with  charcoal.  The  chessmen  had  been  carved, 
with  no  little  labour,  out  of  pieces  of  our  fire- wood. 
Later  in  the  winter,  our  chess  playing  came  to  a 
stop.  We  found  that  the  attempt  to  concentrate 
eyesight  and  attention,  when  we  had  had  so  little 
to  eat  that  our  brain  cells  were  denuded  of  blood, 
caused  dizziness,  and  occasionally  fainting  fits.  I 
think,  in  fact,  that  an  order  to  stop  chess  came 
from  the  general  or  his  adjutant. 

Something  was  done  in  the  way  of  occupation 
or  amusement  by  the  more  active- minded  in  telling 
stories  by  turn,  stories  which  comprised  everything 
from  actual  reminiscence  to  the  vaguest  fantasy. 
Under  the  pressure  of  contributing  their  share  to 


Studies  45 

the  entertaining  of  the  group,  men  who,  according 
to  their  own  account,  had  never  been  guilty  of 
imagination  and  had  not  had  any  power  of  ex 
pression,  found  it  possible  to  add  something  of 
personal  interest  to  the  entertainment.  There 
were  also  instituted  a  few  classes  of  instruction. 
In  company  with  three  or  four  others,  I  took  les 
sons  in  Spanish  from  one  of  the  officers  who  was 
a  Mexican  by  birth.  He  succeeded  in  securing, 
through  the  kindness  of  one  of  the  guards,  a  second 
hand  Spanish  grammar  which  was  divided  up  into 
as  many  pieces  as  there  were  students.  Some  of 
us,  therefore,  had  to  begin  the  grammar  in  the 
middle  and  some  tackled  their  Spanish  language 
from  the  final  pages ;  but  before  the  book  was  ab 
solutely  worn  out,  we  did  make  some  progress. 

I  myself  undertook  a  class  in  German,  but  as  I 
had  no  grammar  or  text  available  I  had  to  work 
entirely  from  memory.  I  was  assisted  in  my  un 
dertaking  by  a  scholarly  young  captain,  William 
Cook,  who  had  had  time  before  entering  the  service 
to  get  through  some  years  at  least  of  his  course  at 
Yale.  Cook  knew  no  German,  but  he  had  a  good 
working  knowledge  of  grammar.  During  my 


46  A  Barmecide  Feast 

sojourn  in  Germany,  I  was  under  the  care  of  an 
oculist  and  I  had  taken  in  my  German  by  ear  and 
knew  none  of  the  rules  of  grammar.  The  work 
of  our  class  was  shaped  by  the  presentation  by 
myself  of  a  certain  number  of  sentences  or  at 
least  of  words  in  grammatical  relation  to  each 
other,  from  which  examples  Cook  would  work 
out  the  grammatical  rule.  Then  our  patient 
students  would  have  to  learn  first  the  words  and 
then  the  rule.  We  did  make  some  progress  so 
that  before  the  work  of  the  class  was  given  up 
there  was  quite  a  fluency  of  utterance,  most  of  it 
pretty  bad  as  far  as  the  German  was  concerned, 
but  still  giving  evidence  of  application.  I  recall 
that  towards  the  end  of  our  class  work,  Cook  and 
I  decided  to  give  a  banquet  to  our  class.  The 
feast  could  be  described  as  Barmecide  as  there 
was  nothing  to  eat  and  nothing  to  drink.  But 
we  gathered  together  on  the  floor  as  if  we  were 
sitting  about  a  well-appointed  table.  From  my 
end  of  the  table  I  read  out,  as  if  from  a  menu,  a 
list  of  the  courses  which  as  given  were  certainly 
most  appetising  and  in  the  wording  of  which  no 
expense  was  spared.  The  associate  host  from  his 


Will  Power  and  Vitality  47 

end  specified  the  wines  which  were  to  accompany 
each  course.  After  going  through  the  motions  of 
eating  and  drinking,  the  two  hosts  read  in  turn  the 
toasts  of  the  evening  which  had  to  be  responded 
to  by  the  men  called  upon.  It  was  the  instruction 
that  the  utterances  were  to  be  made  in  German  with 
the  permission  when  no  German  word  was  avail 
able,  to  fill  in  that  the  gap  with  an  English  term. 
The  language  resulting  was  naturally  pretty  mixed, 
but  we  did  get  some  fun  out  of  the  attempt  and 
we  promised  each  other  that  "when  the  cruel 
war  was  over,'*  the  dinner  was  to  be  repeated  in 
the  best  restaurant  in  New  York  and  that  it  should 
not  be  a  Barmecide  feast.  The  real  feast  never 
came  off.  By  the  time  that  those  of  us  who  were 
New  Yorkers  got  home,  the  group  of  our  German 
class  had  been  so  seriously  broken  into  by  death 
that  the  coming  together  would  have  been  not  a 
conviviality  but  a  sadness. 

The  desire  of  occupation,  whether  in  the  way  of 
amusement  or  instruction,  was  not  merely  for  the 
purpose  of  passing  the  time.  We  realised  in  look 
ing  about  the  room  that  unless  our  minds,  or  at 
least  our  thoughts,  could  be  kept  busy  in  some 


48  Government 

fashion,  there  was  risk  of  stagnation  that  might 
easily  develop  into  idiocy.  I  recall  a  number  of 
cases  in  which  men  who,  as  their  vitality  diminished 
had  lost  the  power  of  hopefulness,  had  lost  also 
the  control  of  their  wills;  the  faces  became  vacant 
and  in  the  more  serious  cases  their  conscious  in 
telligence  disappeared.  These  men  would  sit 
twirling  their  thumbs  or  would  stand  looking  out 
of  the  windows  with  a  vacant  stare  and  with  eyes 
that  saw  nothing.  I  should  have  been  interested 
in  learning  how  far  this  loss  of  will  power  and  un 
derstanding  persisted  with  such  of  the  men  as 
survived  the  imprisonment;  but  there  was  no  op 
portunity  of  tracing  the  later  fortunes  of  our 
prison  comrades. 

I  have  referred  to  the  "government"  of  the 
prison — and  to  the  fact  that  we  accepted,  at  least 
in  our  officers*  prison,  the  authority  of  seniors 
just  as  we  should  have  done  in  camp.  I  believe 
that  this  acceptance  of  authority  and  maintenance 
of  discipline  accounted  for  the  better  success  on 
the  part  of  the  officers  as  compared  with  the  en 
listed  men  in  maintaining  the  vitality  and  in  les 
sening  the  percentage  of  illness  and  death.  There 


Officers  and  Privates  49 

were  two  other  prisons  in  the  town,  both  I  believe 
tobacco  warehouses,  in  which  the  enlisted  men 
were  confined,  possibly  a  thousand  or  more. 
There  was  no  difference  in  the  quarters  and  no 
difference  in  the  food  between  the  two  prisons; 
but  we  understood  from  the  Confederate  sergeants 
that  the  percentage  of  death  among  the  men  was 
very  much  greater  than  among  the  officers. 

During  the  first  two  years  of  the  war,  there  was 
for  the  majority  of  the  Northern  regiments  very 
little  difference  in  class  between  the  men  in  the 
ranks  and  the  commissioned  officers.  The  men 
in  the  ranks  and  the  officers  came  from  practically 
the  same  family  groups  and  the  same  average  oc 
cupations  and  they  differed  but  little  in  average 
intelligence.  As  the  war  progressed,  however, 
the  ineffective  officers  who  had  gotten  their 
commissions  either  by  accident  or  by  influence, 
were  largely  weeded  out.  The  men  who  secured 
commissions  during  the  last  two  years  were  much 
more  largely  men  who  were  promoted  from  the 
ranks  as  they  had  shown  capacity.  They  were 
naturally  on  the  whole  of  better  education,  and  of 
larger  intelligence  than  the  men  who  remained  in 


50  Hayes  and  Duffid 

the  ranks  and  they  possessed  a  better  will  power. 
It  was  this  will  power,  the  decision  to  live  if  pos 
sible,  the  unwillingness  to  give  up,  beaten  by  the 
Confederacy  or  by  circumstances,  that  helped 
during  the  last  winter  of  the  war  to  save  the  lives 
of  a  number  of  starving  officers. 

The  senior  officer  in  the  Danville  Prison  during 
the  larger  part  of  the  winter  was  Brigadier-General 
Joseph  Hayes,  of  Boston,  who  had  been  in  com 
mand  of  a  regular  brigade  in  the  5th  Corps.  It  is 
my  impression  that  Colonel  Ralston  who  had 
commanded  one  of  the  regiments  from  Central 
New  York,  acted  as  associate  with  Hayes.  I  do 
not  recall  the  name  of  the  officer  who  did  duty 
as  prison  adjutant.  The  officer  next  in  rank  to 
Hayes  was  a  plucky  and  headstrong  general  named 
Duffie.  Duffie  had,  I  believe,  seen  service  in 
France  and  was,  I  was  told,  a  capable  cavalry 
officer.  He  was  ambitious,  vain,  and  if  crossed, 
somewhat  hot-tempered.  His  qualities  would  not 
have  been  impressed  upon  my  memory  if  it  had 
not  been  for  his  responsibility  in  the  direction  of 
an  attempt  to  escape,  an  attempt  which  was  badly 
planned  and  badly  executed  and  which  cost  the 


An  Attempted  Outbreak  51 

lives  of  several  of  our  prisoners  and  the  wounding 
of  several  more. 

At  the  time  of  this  attempt  which  was,  I  think, 
in  the  middle  of  January,  1865,  General  Hayes  was 
ill  and  had  been  removed  to  the  prison  hospital. 
News  had  come  from  Richmond  to  the  Confederate 
commander  of  our  prison  that  a  band  of  Yankee 
raiders  were  operating  somewhere  to  the  west  of 
Danville  and  were  probably  intending  to  make  a 
dash  at  certain  of  the  bridges  on  the  railroad 
running  southward.  A  couple  of  companies, 
comprising  perhaps  150  men,  had  been  brought 
into  Danville  by  train  as  the  first  contingent  of  a 
force  which  was  expected  to  head  off  the  raiders 
and  to  protect  the  bridges.  We  knew  the  number 
of  this  force  because  they  were  made  the  guests  of 
the  prison  guard  and  in  going  into  the  guard-house 
for  their  noon-day  meal,  they  had  stacked  their 
muskets  within  sight  of  our  prison  windows.  It 
occurred  to  some  one  that  if  those  150  muskets 
could  be  seized,  we  should  have  enough  force  to 
overcome,  at  least  for  the  moment,  the  prison 
guard,  while  the  unarmed  owners  of  the  muskets 
would  be  helpless.  Duffie  (the  officer  highest  in 


52  An  Attempted  Outbreak 

rank)  jumped  at  the  idea  and  called  for  volunteers 
to  make  a  rush  for  the  muskets.  We  youngsters 
were  naturally  not  called  into  the  council,  but  we 
were  able  to  hear  some  of  the  discussion.  A 
number  of  the  older  or  at  least  of  the  more  experi 
enced  officers  gave  their  opinion  at  once  against 
the  scheme.  The  opportunity  for  getting  at  the 
muskets  was  to  be  made  by  the  sending  out  of  a 
party  for  water  and  at  the  moment  of  the  water 
party's  return,  a  rush  was  to  be  made  with  a 
column  of  a  hundred  or  more,  at  the  open  door  of 
the  basement.  The  difficulties  of  the  immediate 
execution  of  the  scheme  were  serious.  Even, 
however,  if  the  first  steps  had  been  successful  and 
we  had  secured  the  muskets,  and  if  we  had  been 
able  with  these  muskets  to  get  control  of  the 
guards  and  of  the  guard-house,  the  position  would 
have  been  a  very  unpromising  one.  In  order  to 
get  to  our  own  lines  on  the  northeast,  it  was  neces 
sary  to  make  our  way  through  Lee's  army.  The 
only  direction  in  which  we  were  not  likely  to  en 
counter  rebel  forces  was  the  southwest  towards 
the  mountains  of  North  Carolina.  That  plan 
meant,  however,  finding  our  way  without  food, 


Duffid  Assumes  Command         53 

with  very  little  clothing,  and  with  hardly  any 
shoes,  through  many  miles  of  wilderness.  Such 
a  body  of  men  could  have  been  easily  overtaken 
by  a  comparatively  small  force  of  cavalry.  To 
most  of  us  the  plan  seemed,  therefore,  to  be  an 
absurdity.  Among  those  who  took  this  view  was 
Colonel  Ralston. 

Duffle  listened  to  the  objections  and  then  as 
serted  his  authority  as  commander.  "I  order  the 
attempt  to  be  made,"  he  said,  "and  I  call  upon  the 
men  who  have  not  forgotten  how  to  obey  orders, 
to  follow."  With  such  a  word  there  was  of  course 
no  alternative.  A  hundred  and  fifty  of  us  fell  in 
and  received  our  instructions.  Three  or  four  were 
detailed  to  overpower  and  to  choke  senseless  the 
guard  who  had  charge  of  the  prison  yard,  while 
another  group  was  detailed  to  take  care  in  the  same 
manner  of  the  guard  or  of  the  two  guards  who  pa 
trolled  the  lower  floor.  Other  men  were  detailed  to 
make  up  the  water  party,  a  party  which  being  left 
outside  of  the  building,  would,  if  we  succeeded  in 
breaking  out,  be  in  no  little  peril.  The  signal  was 
given  and  the  rush  at  the  guards  was  made.  One 
man  was  successfully  stifled,  but  one  of  the  two,  or 


54  A  Rush  for  Liberty 

of  the  three  (I  have  forgotten  the  number)  suc 
ceeded,  before  being  finally  jumped  upon,  in  get 
ting  out  a  yell  of  warning.  The  yell  came  just  as 
the  door  had  been  opened  to  let  in  the  water  party. 
The  guards  outside  made  a  rush  at  once  to  close 
the  half -opened  door  and  the  column  from  within, 
taken  by  surprise,  was  a  little  late  in  making  the 
counter  rush.  The  guards  succeeded  in  getting 
the  door  closed  and  the  bar  up,  and  then,  putting 
their  rifles  through  the  gratings  of  the  windows, 
they  fired  one  or  more  volleys  upon  our  men  as 
sembled  on  the  lower  floor.  A  number  were  hit, 
I  do  not  now  recall  just  how  many,  but  I  do  re 
member  that  one  of  the  first  who  fell  was  Colonel 
Ralston,  who,  while  protesting  from  the  beginning 
against  the  movement,  had  been  at  the  head  of 
the  column.  The  water  party,  fortunately  was 
not  molested.  We  carried  our  wounded  upstairs 
as  the  men  from  the  guard-house  rushed  out  and 
took  possession  of  their  muskets.  There  was 
nothing  more  to  be  done  and  the  Confederate 
colonel  in  charge  realised  that  the  attempt  was 
over.  He  marched  in  a  little  later  with  his  ad 
jutant  and  a  couple  of  guards  and  had  the  wounded 


A  Tunnel  55 

carried  to  the  hospital.  As  Ralston  was  taken  off, 
I  recall  his  answer  to  a  question  from  one  of  his 
friends  as  to  the  extent  of  his  hurt:  "It  is,"  he 
said,  "neither  as  deep  as  a  well  nor  as  wide  as  a 
church  door,  but  't  will  do."  He  died  that  night. 
It  was  the  belief  of  most  of  us  that  if  Hayes  had 
been  within  the  prison  at  the  time  of  this  so-called 
"opportunity  to  escape,"  no  such  foolhardy 
attempt  would  have  been  risked. 

In  the  course  of  the  winter,  a  plan  of  escape  of 
a  very  different  character  was  attempted.  In 
looking  out  of  the  upper  windows  of  the  prison, 
we  could  see  on  the  side  towards  the  open  country 
a  big  ditch  which  was  not  many  feet  from  the 
prison  wall.  The  suggestion  came  to  some  that 
if  by  means  of  a  tunnel  from  the  basement,  one 
or  more  men  could  reach  the  ditch,  they  could 
lie  quiet  until  an  opportunity  came  to  slip  away 
in  the  darkness  towards  the  open  country.  The 
first  difficulty  was  how  to  get  to  the  cellar  for  the 
necessary  work  on  such  a  tunnel.  We  had  noted 
on  first  visiting  the  prison  yard  a  pair  of  folding 
doors,  barred  from  the  inside,  which  from  their 
position  evidently  gave  entrance  (or  as  barred, 


56  Obstacles 

refused  entrance)  to  the  cellar.  One  of  the  guards 
was  posted  in  the  yard  and  it  was  his  duty  to 
remain  there  through  the  two  hours  (or  later,  as 
the  watches  were  extended,  through  the  four 
hours)  of  his  service.  The  walls  about  the  yard 
were  high  enough  to  make  impossible  any  scaling, 
and  even  if  an  exceptionally  tall  prisoner,  a  man 
with  a  Jean  Valjean  capacity  for  flying  over  a  wall, 
could  have  gotten  across,  he  would  have  found 
himself  under  the  fire  of  the  muskets  of  the  guards 
who  patrolled  about  the  building.  The  guard 
having  charge  of  the  yard  got  into  the  habit, 
therefore,  as  the  winter  progressed  and  the  weather 
became  more  severe,  of  taking  his  station  inside 
the  door  of  the  lower  floor.  This  absence  of  the 
guard  gave  us  the  opportunity  of  testing  the  bar 
which  held  closed  the  doors  leading  into  the  cellar. 
It  proved  to  be  wooden  and  a  hand-saw  having 
been  produced  through  the  nicking  with  a  pen 
knife  of  the  edge  of  an  old  table  knife,  the  bar  was, 
on  one  stormy  evening  when  the  wind  made  a  suffi 
cient  noise,  sawn  through  with  no  great  difficulty. 
The  pressing  open  of  one  of  the  folding  doors  re 
vealed,  as  it  could  only  reveal,  an  unknown  dark- 


Work  in  the  Cellar  57 

ness.  We  had,  of  course,  no  means  of  knowing 
how  deep  below  the  floor  of  the  cellar  might  be. 
Lots  were  drawn  for  the  duty  or  the  privilege,  of 
finding  out,  and  a  couple  of  men  tumbling  over 
found  the  drop  not  more  than  four  feet.  A  third 
man  snuggled  into  a  corner  of  the  yard  to  give 
warning  when  the  coast  would  be  clear  so  that  the 
interlopers  could  make  their  way  back  again. 
It  was  only  on  stormy  nights  that  this  invasion 
of  the  cellar  became  possible  but  there  were  in  the 
course  of  a  month  or  two  enough  such  nights  to 
make  possible  a  beginning  of  the  work  on  the 
tunnel.  The  operation  had  to  be  conducted  en 
tirely  by  "feel "  as  the  cellar  was  in  total  darkness. 
The  floor  of  earth  was,  fortunately,  fairly  dry. 
A  point  was  selected  midway  along  the  outer  wall, 
that  is  to  say  the  wall  towards  the  open  country, 
at  which  by  measuring  by  "feel'*  the  length  of  the 
bigger  stones  in  the  foundation,  the  prospector 
secured,  or  thought  he  had  secured,  a  stone  big 
enough  as  an  archway  for  the  tunnel.  The  ex 
cavating  instruments  comprised  a  couple  of  tin 
plates  and  a  few  shingles.  The  ground  was  for 
tunately  soft,  and  as  the  cellar  was  not  visited, 


^g  Miscalculations 

for  this  particular  tunnel  there  was  no  such  diffi 
culty  as  was  encountered  with  most  of  the  attempts 
at  tunnelling  from  prisons,  in  disposing  of  the 
excavated  earth.     In  the  course  of  weeks,  progress 
was  made,  but  a  miscalculation  as  to  the  length 
of  the  superlying  stone  or  as  to  the  strength  of  the 
stone,  came  near  to  costing  the  life  of  one  of  the 
tunnellers  and  resulted  in  the  necessity  of  begin 
ning  the  work  over  again.     The  stone  fell  in  and 
caught  our  man  somewhere  on  the  shoulders.     A 
hurried  signal  was  given  out  to  the  yard  and  at 
considerable  risk  of  discovery  (fortunately  there 
was  a  heavy    sleet   on)  several  men   tumbled  in 
and  succeeded  in  lifting  the  stone  and  in  bringing 
out  in  a  half -smothered  condition  their  unfortu 
nate  comrade.     He  had  his  face  washed  and  was 
slipped  upstairs  without  being  observed,  and  the 
next  day,  after  a  more  careful  examination  as  to 
the  safety  of  the  foundation  stone  above,  a  fresh 
beginning  was  made. 

In  the  course  of  a  few  weeks,  this  tunnel  was 
projected  out  beyond  the  building  and  beneath 
the  walk  along  which  marched  the  prison  patrol. 
We  had  of  course  no  spirit  level  and  there  was  no 


The  Alarm  59 

light  with  which  it  could  have  been  utilised.  The 
working  of  the  line  of  excavation  was,  therefore, 
a  matter  of  feel  and  of  guess-work,  and  it  is 
not  surprising  that  under  the  circumstances  the 
engineering  failed  in  precision.  The  tunnel  had 
been  permitted  to  slant  upwards  too  close  to  the 
surface  of  the  ground.  As  a  result  of  this  mis 
chance,  one  of  the  guards  in  an  early  morning  hour 
(fortunately  at  a  time  when  no  workers  were  busy 
in  the  cellar)  fell  through.  Frightened  as  he  was 
(I  believe  his  arm  was  broken)  he  yelled  murder, 
and  the  guard  next  to  him  fired  off  his  piece.  Then 
followed  a  general  firing  of  pieces  into  the  darkness 
and  the  turning  out  of  the  entire  prison  guard. 
We  understood  afterwards  that  the  alarm  had  come 
to  the  guard-house  that  the  Yankees  were  at 
tacking  the  town,  a  belief  that  was  shared  by  that 
number  of  the  prisoners  who  had  not  been  invited 
to  take  part  in  the  work  of  the  tunnel  and  who 
had  no  knowledge  of  the  scheme.  Nothing  more 
serious  happened,  however,  than  the  spoiling  of 
our  sleep  for  the  early  morning  hours.  When  the 
poor  guard  whom  we  had  unwittingly  entrapped 
was  pulled  out  of  the  hole,  there  was  of  course 


60  Failure  of  the  Tunnel 

no  difficulty  in  tracing  the  line  of  the  tunnel.  The 
folding  doors  admitting  to  the  cellar  were  closed 
with  an  iron  bar,  and  we  judged  that  the  guards 
whose  duty  it  was  to  hold  post  in  the  yard  must 
have  received  a  pretty  sharp  reprimand  from  their 
superiors.  Through  the  rest  of  the  winter,  how 
ever  inclement  the  weather,  the  man  with  the 
musket  remained  outside.  A  tin  plate  had  been 
left  behind  by  one  of  the  workers  and  this  was 
brought  into  the  upper  room  by  the  sergeant  of  the 
guard  for  the  purpose  of  identifying  the  owner. 
Fortunately  the  plate  carried  but  a  single  initial, 
and  the  owner  preferred  to  lose  his  property, 
valuable  as  it  was,  rather  than  to  incur  the  penalty 
that  was  visited  upon  all  attempts  to  escape. 

I  recall  during  the  winter  but  one  other  method 
of  escape  that  was  tried  and  that  did  bring  a  small 
measure  of  success.  The  path  by  which  we  trav 
elled  from  the  prison  to  the  river  on  our  trips 
for  water  passed  the  back  of  a  foundry,  the  works 
of  which  went  through  to  the  street  beyond.  One 
of  the  furnaces  abutted  almost  directly  on  the 
path  and  we  noticed  that  during  certain  days  in 
the  week  this  furnace  was  out  of  blast.  It  oc- 


The  Foundry  Furnace  61 

curred  to  some  one  that  it  would  be  possible  for  a 
man  to  tumble  in  from  the  pathway  to  the  cavity 
of  the  furnace  and,  lying  there  until  nightfall,  to 
make  his  way  in  the  dark  across  the  turnpike 
bridge  to  North  Carolina  and  possible  safety. 
In  the  early  part  of  the  winter,  the  guards  had  been 
strict  in  their  supervision  of  the  parties,  counting 
the  group  as  we  came  out  and  as  we  returned,  and 
keeping  a  close  watch  as  we  marched.  Later, 
the  supervision  decreased;  it  was  realised  that  the 
chances  of  escape  were  small  and  that  apart  from 
the  difficulty  of  getting  out  of  the  town,  the  pro 
spect  of  getting  safely  through  the  journey  to  our 
lines  was  very  slim.  The  water  parties  were  also 
made  larger  because  we  had  insisted  that  no  one 
man  was  strong  enough  to  carry  even  a  half -full 
bucket.  The  men  whose  shoes  still  possessed  any 
possibility  of  service  drew  lots  for  the  chance  of 
tumbling  into  the  furnace.  The  first  trial  came 
out  happily.  Under  a  prearranged  plan,  the  last 
man  of  the  water  party,  losing  his  shoe  in  the  mud, 
stopped  to  regain  it  and  the  guard  who  brought  up 
the  end  of  the  procession  naturally  had  to  stop 
with  him.  The  man  marching  immediately  in 


62  Making  Good  the  Count 

front  of  that  guard  was  the  one  who  had  drawn 
the  lot  and  he  tumbled  over  unobserved  into  the 
furnace  hole  on  the  right.  A  week  later,  another 
chap  got  off  in  the  same  way  and  in  the  course  of 
four  or  five  weeks,  four  men  in  all  succeeded  in 
getting  away.  Each  chance  had  to  wait  for  a 
convenient  opportunity.  The  furnace  fire  must 
be  out,  the  water  party  had  to  be  fairly  large, 
and  the  guards  must  not  be  too  observant. 

The  question  as  to  making  good  the  count  at 
the  morning  roll-call  had  of  course  been  considered. 
The  sergeant  who  had  charge  of  the  roll  was  a 
good-natured  one-armed  veteran  from  South 
Carolina.  It  was  his  habit,  after  seeing  that  the 
yard  was  clear,  to  count  the  men  in  the  lower  room 
and  then,  making  his  way  up  the  straight  steps 
and  watching  to  see  that  no  one  passed  him,  to 
add  to  his  count  the  men  who  were  in  the  room 
above.  If  these  two  figures  made  up  the  number 
of  prisoners  who  ought  to  be  present,  his  responsi 
bility  was  ended.  We  managed,  before  the  first 
man  got  away,  to  cut  a  trap-door  in  the  flooring 
between  the  two  rooms  in  the  corner  diagonally 
farthest  from  the  hatchway.  We  had  still  avail- 


The  Sergeant's  Roll-Call  63 

able  the  saw  that  had  been  utilised  on  the  folding 
doors  and  I  think  that  another  saw  was  manu 
factured  for  the  purpose.  Over  this  trap-door 
was  placed  a  chap  who  groaned  with  more  or  less 
real  inflammatory  rheumatism,  and  the  scraps  of 
blanket  on  which  he  lay  covered  the  lines  of  the 
trap-door.  A  certain  amount  of  groaning  on  the 
part  of  the  rheumatic  patient  kept  the  good- 
natured  sergeant  from  inspecting  his  corner  too 
closely.  On  the  morning  after  the  first  escape, 
the  patient  being  for  the  moment  removed  from 
his  corner,  a  prisoner  from  below  was  hustled  upon 
the  shoulders  of  a  comrade  so  as  to  be  counted 
over  again  in  the  room  above.  There  was  of 
course  a  little  more  difficulty  after  the  second  and 
after  the  third  escape  in  getting  two  and  then  three 
men  through  the  trap-door  while  the  sergeant 
was  passing  up  the  stairway.  The  sergeant  was, 
however,  kept  engaged  in  conversation  on  the 
causes  of  the  war,  on  the  history  of  South  Carolina, 
or  on  some  other  engrossing  subject,  and  as  long 
as  no  one  passed  him  on  the  stairs,  he  had  no 
reason  to  feel  suspicious  at  the  delay.  When 
the  fourth  prisoner  got  away,  the  problem  of  the 


64  A  Winter  Tramp 

trap-door  became,  however,  quite  serious.  It 
was  finally  arranged  that  there  should  be  an  acci 
dent  on  the  stairway.  A  couple  of  chaps  began 
scuffling,  near  the  top  step,  as  if  in  play,  and  at 
the  critical  moment  when  the  sergeant  was  half 
way  up,  the  scufflers  tumbled  over,  rolling  down 
the  stairs  and  carrying  the  sergeant  with  them. 
There  was  of  course  risk  of  broken  arms  or  some 
thing  worse,  but  they  all  got  off  with  a  few  bruises 
and  after  earnest  apologies,  the  sergeant  was  per 
mitted  to  make  his  way  upstairs  and  to  complete 
his  count.  Two  of  the  men  who  took  the  furnace 
road  to  freedom  got  across  the  river  into  North 
Carolina,  and  one  of  these,  after  a  long  and  freezing 
sojourn  in  the  mountains,  actually  turned  up 
within  our  lines  somewhere  in  Tennessee.  The 
other  was  never  heard  from  and  doubtless  perished 
in  the  wilderness.*  The  other  two  thought  they 
would  have  a  better  chance  in  Virginia,  but  they 
were  both  captured  before  they  had  got  very  far 

*  After  my  paper  was  put  into  type,  I  learned  that  this  state 
ment  was  an  error.  I  have  received  from  the  veteran  referred 
to  a  letter  denying,  with  some  indignation,  that  he  had  ever 
"perished  in  the  wilderness."  He  succeeded,  with  no  little  pluck 
and  endurance,  in  making  his  way  to  our  lines  on  the  coast  of 
North  Carolina. 


An  Excited  Colonel  65 

north  and  were  taken  to  Richmond.  The  first 
man  was  identified  as  coming  from  Danville,  and 
General  Winder,  the  commissary  of  prisoners, 
sent  word  up  to  the  commander  of  our  prison,  a 
word  that  must  have  been  in  the  shape  of  a  re 
primand,  to  know  why  he  had  not  reported  the 
escape  of  his  prisoner.  Our  commander,  a  one- 
legged  Marylander,  reported  that  there  must  be 
some  error  or  that  the  Yankee  was  lying,  as  he  had 
all  his  prisoners  in  hand.  A  week  or  two  later, 
the  second  chap  was  captured  and  also  taken  to 
Richmond  and  a  similar,  and  probably  sharper,  re 
proof  came  up  to  Danville.  Then  the  commander 
said  he  would  do  the  counting  himself.  He  had 
us  all  put  into  the  upper  room  and  went  over  the 
ranks  man  by  man.  When  he  found  that  there 
were  four  Yankees  short,  he  was  a  very  excited 
lieutenant-colonel  indeed.  He  made  us  an  address, 
speaking  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  of  the  pains  he  had 
taken  to  make  us  comfortable.  He  was  actually 
reproaching  the  350  men  who  were  left  with  the 
crime  of  the  four  who  had  gotten  away.  His  in 
dignation  that  there  should  be  any  dissatisfac 
tion  on  our  part  reminded  me  of  Mr.  Bumble's 


66  Poor  Whites  on  Guard 

impressive  words  to  Oliver  Twist.  As  far  as  I 
know,  the  secret  of  the  trap-door  was  not  dis 
covered,  but  the  poor  sergeant  of  South  Carolina 
was  deprived  of  his  job  and  thereafter  the  roll  was 
called  in  the  upper  room  with  all  present.  It  hap 
pened  further  that  after  the  escape  of  the  four 
men,  the  work  in  the  foundry  became  more  active 
and  there  was  practically  no  time  when  it  could 
be  utilised  by  us. 

Our  guards  represented  rather  a  curious  mixture 
of  good-natured  indifference  and  a  kind  of  half 
witted  cruelty.  The  officers  were,  as  stated, 
disabled  veterans  and  were  on  the  whole  not  a  bad 
lot.  This  was  true  also  of  certain  of  the  sergeants. 
The  rank  and  file,  however,  can  best  be  described 
as  scrapings  from  the  mountains.  They  were 
mostly  slight,  overgrown  youngsters  with  less 
than  the  proper  proportion  of  wits.  They  seemed 
something  like  the  beans  that  had  been  given  to  us 
in  our  soup  at  Libby,  not  fit  for  service  in  the 
Confederate  ranks  but  good  enough  for  the  Yankee 
prisoners.  I  assume  that  if  the  disease  had  at 
that  date  been  discovered,  they  would  have  been 
described  as  hook-worm  patients.  I  remember 


A  Malicious  Shot  67 

one  incident  which  indicated  the  lack  of  proper 
soldierly  control.  A  man  standing  near  me  was 
washing  his  tin  plate  out  of  the  window  and  some 
drops  of  water  fell  on  the  head  of  the  guard  below. 
Without  a  word  of  caution,  the  guard  turned,  put 
up  his  piece,  and  fired.  The  ball,  missing  the  man 
at  whom  it  was  directed,  went  through  the  floor 
a  little  farther  along  and  shattered  the  arm  of  a 
fellow  who  was  entirely  innocent  in  the  matter. 
A  shattered  arm  in  the  low  state  of  vitality,  which 
was  general  in  February,  was  a  very  serious  thing, 
and  it  is  my  memory  that  this  poor  fellow  lost  his 
life.  Some  of  us  who  had  seen  the  whole  matter 
made  up  a  report  for  the  officer  of  the  guard  and 
demanded  that  the  guard  should  be  punished.  He 
disappeared  for  a  few  days  and  we  assumed  that 
he  was  somewhere  under  discipline.  But  when  he 
returned  he  had  on  corporal's  stripes  and  was 
more  cocky  than  ever.  He  belonged  to  the  half 
witted  lot,  and  I  do  not  believe  he  had  any  full 
responsibility  for  his  actions.  He  was  in  fact  not 
fit  to  be  trusted  with  a  musket. 

In  December,  1864,  when  it  seemed  as  if  the 
resumption  of  general  exchanges  might  still  be 


68  Supplies  for  Prisoners 

indefinitely  delayed,  an  agreement  was  arrived 
at  between  the  authorities  on  either  side  for  the 
paroling  of  certain  officers  who  could  be  used  for 
the  distribution  among  their  fellow-prisoners  of 
supplies  delivered  for  the  purpose  under  flag  of 
truce.  As  the  death-rate  in  the  Southern  prisons 
continued  to  increase,  there  was  naturally  an  in 
creasing  pressure  brought  to  bear  on  the  part  of 
the  kinsfolk  of  the  prisoners  upon  the  authorities 
in  Washington  to  do  something  either  to  bring 
about  exchange  or  in  some  other  way  to  save  the 
lives  of  the  men.  The  interest  of  the  Confederacy 
in  bringing  about  exchange  has  already  been  re 
ferred  to,  and  the  view  of  Commissioner  Ould 
that  it  was  desirable  to  secure  the  return  of  able- 
bodied  veterans  in  exchange  for  used-up  Yankees 
who  could  never  fight  again,  finally  prevailed* 
but  not  until  February,  1865.  In  December,  the 
authorities  in  Washington,  carrying  out  promptly 
the  agreement  arrived  at,  paroled  a  Confederate 
general,  Beale  of  Georgia,  who  was  permitted  to 
select  as  associates  three  or  four  other  officers. 
A  number  of  bales  of  cotton  were  sent  up  from 
Savannah,  under  flag  of  truce,  only  a  week  or  two 


In  Richmond  on  Parole  69 

before  the  capture  of  the  city  by  Sherman  had 
transferred  to  the  United  States  the  title  to  all 
the  cotton  remaining  in  the  city.  This  cotton  was 
sold  on  the  cotton  exchange  in  New  York  for  the 
account  of  General  Beale,  and  the  price  being  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  $1.50  a  pound,  he  secured 
sufficient  funds  for  his  purposes.  The  authorities 
in  charge  of  the  Confederate  prisons  acted  more 
slowly,  and  it  was  not  until  February  that  parole 
papers  were  given  to  General  Joseph  Hayes  of 
Boston,  and  to  three  officers  selected  by  him  as  his 
associates.  The  post  of  distributing  officer  on 
parole  was  naturally  very  much  in  demand.  It 
meant  direct  communication  with  home,  clean 
clothes,  soap,  and  the  possibility  of  something  to 
eat ;  and  Hayes  must  have  had  difficulty  in  making 
his  selections.  I  was  very  fortunate,  having  but 
a  slight  personal  acquaintance  with  the  general, 
to  be  taken  for  his  junior  assistant  in  the  work 
to  be  done  in  Richmond.  The  senior  was  Colonel 
Charles  Hooper  of  Boston.  I  do  not  recall  the 
names  of  the  other  two  officers  who  were  paroled. 
One  was  posted  in  Danville  and  the  other  was  sent 
to  Salisbury.  It  is  my  impression  that  no  attempt 


70  In  Richmond  on  Parole 

was   made  for   the   distribution   of   supplies   for 
prisons  south  of  Salisbury. 

Hayes,  Hooper,  and  myself  were  shipped  back 
to  Richmond  on  a  train  which  seemed  to  be  still 
slower  than  that  by  which  we  had  three  months 
back  journeyed  to  Danville.  At  the  close  of 
February,  1865,  the  single  track  road  from  Rich 
mond  to  Danville  was  in  very  bad  condition,  while 
the  pressure  upon  the  rails  must  have  been  very 
considerable.  We  were  given  quarters  in  Rich 
mond  in  a  tobacco  factory,  not  very  far  from  Libby 
Prison,  and  a  coloured  corporal  from  Weitzel's 
brigade  was  paroled  to  wait  upon  us.  It  was  my 
duty  as  the  youngest  to  report  two  or  three  times 
a  week  to  the  pier  on  the  James  where  I  met  the 
officer  in  charge  of  our  flag  of  truce  boat,  and  to 
give  a  receipt  to  him  for  the  supplies  brought  up. 
We  had  during  the  winter  been  permitted  to  write 
letters  to  be  forwarded  across  the  lines  to  friends 
at  home.  The  restriction  was  that  the  letter 
should  be  on  a  half  sheet  and  that  it  should  be 
handed  open  to  the  adjutant  of  the  prison.  If 
the  contents  of  the  letter  did  not  meet  the  approval 
of  the  adjutant,  it  was  not  to  be  forwarded.  It 


Clean  Clothes  and  Soap!  71 

was  only  occasionally  that  we  could  secure  scraps 
of  paper  on  which  to  write,  but  I  managed  to 
place  in  the  hands  of  the  prison  adjutant  a  letter 
to  the  home  folks  about  once  a  week.  It  was 
only  on  my  return  home  in  March  that  I  learned 
that  but  five  of  my  letters  had  gotten  through. 
I  do  not  know  whether  the  result  with  my  letters 
could  be  taken  as  a  fair  example  of  what  happened 
to  the  letters  of  the  others.  Two  or  three  men  with 
whom  I  had  the  opportunity  later  of  comparing 
experiences,  however,  reported  that  their  friends 
had  received  but  three  or  four  out  of  a  long  series 
of  letters  handed  over  to  the  prison  adjutant. 
The  letters  sent  home  after  the  announcement 
of  our  parole  were,  however,  safely  delivered  and 
as  a  result,  we  three  officers  who  were  fortunate 
enough  to  have  been  assigned  in  Richmond  se 
cured,  by  an  early  flag  of  truce  boat,  greetings 
from  home,  clean  clothes,  and  soap.  We  hardly 
recognised  ourselves  after  our  first  cleaning  up 
and  the  replacing  of  the  rags  with  blue  cloth  that 
held  together. 

The  supplies  delivered  to  me  from  the  flag  of 
truce  boat  comprised  blankets,   blouses,   shirts, 


72  "Toting"  Supplies  across  Richmond 

trousers  and  shoes.  I  do  not  recall  the  receipt  of 
any  food.  It  would,  in  fact,  have  been  pretty 
difficult  to  get  food  safely  across  hungry  Richmond 
into  the  prisons  even  though  the  need  of  starving 
prisoners  might  be  greater  than  that  of  the  citizens. 
I  had  some  difficulty  in  the  outset  in  arranging  to 
get  my  supplies  " toted"  across  the  town.  There 
were  hardly  any  vehicles  within  reach  and  those 
that  came  in  sight  were  busy  enough  with  the 
needs  of  the  Confederate  quartermaster  and  com 
missaries.  Such  waggons  as  I  saw  were  drawn  by 
mules,  and  in  the  lack  of  forage  the  mules  were 
thin  and  were  evidently  getting  pretty  weary  of 
their  task.  I  finally  got  hold  of  a  couple  of  darkies 
who  were  too  old  to  be  of  any  particular  service 
for  the  Confederate  officials.  Coloured  men  were, 
of  course,  utilised  very  largely  for  service  in  the 
quartermaster's  department  and  also  for  work 
in  the  trenches.  These  darkies  got  an  old  hand 
cart,  which,  while  too  small  to  make  the  transport 
expeditious,  answered  the  purpose  fairly  well. 
It  was  necessary  for  me  to  accompany  each  trip 
of  the  hand-cart,  as  otherwise  the  coloured  men 
would  have  been  promptly  arrested  as  thieves  and 


The  Streets  of  Richmond          73 

the  goods  would  have  been  lost.  My  parole 
papers  had  to  be  shown  to  every  legitimate  en 
quirer  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  were  shown  also  to 
a  number  of  unofficial  enquirers  who  were  puzzled 
that  a  fellow  in  clean  Federal  uniform  should  be 
walking  through  Richmond  without  guard.  It 
is  fair  to  say  that  I  met  with  hardly  any  instances 
of  discourtesy.  It  is  probable  that  if  I  had  been 
carrying  on  this  work  a  year  or  two  earlier,  I 
should  have  had  more  difficulty  in  getting  through 
the  streets  of  Richmond  without  abuse  of  some 
kind  or  other.  By  February,  1865,  however,  the 
residents  of  Richmond,  and  particularly  those 
who  had  done  service  in  the  ranks,  evidently 
understood  that  the  war  was  coming  to  a  close. 
They  had  in  fact  information  which  was  not  yet 
available  for  a  prisoner  like  myself.  The  certainty 
that  Richmond  must  before  many  weeks  be  in 
the  hands  of  our  troops  might  very  easily  have 
influenced  the  manners  of  the  street  crowd. 

I  had  promised,  under  the  conditions  of  my 
parole,  to  go  nowhere  about  the  city  excepting 
between  the  three  prisons,  Libby,  Castle  Thunder, 
and  one  other  building,  the  name  of  which  I  have 


74  Packages  for  Dead  Men 

forgotten.  It  is  my  belief  that  about  this  date 
the  miserable  encampment  on  Belle  Isle  which 
had  served  earlier  as  a  prison  and  where  so  many 
of  our  good  men  had  frozen  to  death,  had  been 
abandoned.  General  Hayes  learned  that  in  a 
building,  not  far  from  our  quarters  had  been  stored 
a  number  of  packages  sent  through  the  lines  for 
our  prisoners,  and  he  directed  me  to  visit  the  build 
ing  and  to  give  him  a  report.  I  found  some  thou 
sands  of  packages  which  had  accumulated  for  years 
and  many  of  which  had  crumbled  almost  to  dust. 
The  sight  was  really  pathetic  when  one  bore  in 
mind  the  loving  thought  with  which  the  little 
parcels  had  been  prepared  in  Northern  homes  and 
had  been  sent  forth  as  a  greeting  to  the  soldier 
member  of  the  family.  It  is  difficult  to  understand 
just  what  the  idea  of  the  prison  authorities  had 
been  in  regard  to  these  packages.  They  had  re 
ceived  them  by  flag  of  truce  with  the  understand 
ing,  if  not  with  the  promise,  that  they  would  be 
delivered  as  far  as  the  men  to  whom  they  were 
addressed  were  within  reach.  No  trouble,  however, 
appears  to  have  been  taken  to  look  up  the  owners. 
The  fragments  of  many  opened  packages  indicated 


Packages  for  Dead  Men  75 

that  things  which  gave  any  appearance  of  value 
had  been  appropriated  by  the  guards,  while  the 
thousands  of  packages  that  remained  had  simply 
been  thrown  into  a  corner  of  the  tobacco  ware 
house  to  rot.  The  contents  of  such  of  the  parcels 
as  were  still  intact  were  naturally  varied.  I 
remember,  among  the  things  that  remained,  testa 
ments,  locks  of  hair,  packs  of  cards,  and  reading 
matter  of  one  kind  or  another,  from  hymns  to 
melodramatic  romances.  With  these  articles  were 
in  most  cases  loving  short  signatures  which  gave 
no  clue  to  the  full  name  of  the  writer.  Not  a  few 
of  the  packages  had  contained  food  and  these  had 
naturally  decayed  with  the  damp  or  had  been 
eaten  up  by  rats  and  by  insects.  The  traces  of 
the  food  could,  however,  still  be  noted  on  the 
wrappers. 

I  made  out  lists  of  the  names  and  addresses 
that  could  still  be  deciphered  on  the  wrappers 
of  the  parcels  which  were  not  too  much  decayed 
and  the  contents  of  which  could  still  be  of  value 
for  the  prisoners.  These  lists  I  compared  with  the 
rosters  of  the  prisons  and  in  the  chance  that  some 
of  the  roster  names  might  not  have  been  correctly 


76  Packages  for  Dead  Men 

entered,  I  took  pains  more  than  once  to  call  out 
the  names  at  the  roll-call  of  the  prisoners.  I  recall 
but  one  or  two  instances  in  which  I  was  able  to 
connect  the  men  with  the  parcels.  The  accumula 
tion  had  been  going  on  for  such  a  period  of  months 
and  of  years  that  the  men  had  very  largely  dis 
appeared,  either  by  exchange  or  by  death.  The 
general  finally  told  me  to  give  up  the  task  as  not 
worth  further  labour. 

I  may  recall  in  this  connection  a  remark  of  the 
prison  adjutant,  in  regard  to  my  roll-call.  As  I 
came  into  the  prison,  the  men  would  at  once  fall 
into  line,  knowing  that  if  I  had  any  package  or 
message  or  any  material  to  distribute  it  would  be 
necessary  for  me  to  call  the  roll.  "I  don't  under 
stand,  Adjutant,"  said  my  guide,  "how  you  secure 
such  prompt  attention  for  your  roll-call.  When  I 
come  in  in  the  morning  for  my  count,  it  takes  any 
number  of  minutes  to  get  the  fellows  into  line 
and  they  all  insist  that  on  the  ground  of  rheu 
matism  or  other  invalidism,  it  is  impossible  for 
them  to  move  any  more  quickly." 

I  have  no  very  clear  memory  of  the  appearance  of 
the  Richmond  streets,  but  one  impression  remains 


The  Women  of  Richmond          77 

vividly  in  my  mind.  My  walk  to  Castle  Thunder 
took  me  across  Main  Street  where,  in  the  morning 
hours,  I  met  the  women  going  to  market,  and  sad- 
looking  women  they  were.  They  were  for  the 
most  part  dressed  in  black  and  in  the  cases  in 
which,  doubtless  for  the  sake  of  economy,  they 
wore  butternut  brown,  the  faces  were  none  the 
less  in  mourning.  They  looked  as  if  they  were  all 
widows  or  orphans.  The  figures  were  wan  as  well 
they  might  be,  for  at  this  time  the  whole  town  was 
restricted  to  the  shortest  of  short  rations.  In 
their  market  baskets,  they  carried  great  wads  of 
Confederate  currency,  but  I  knew  well  how  little 
purchasing  power  those  blue-back  dollars  pos 
sessed,  and  I  knew  also  from  our  corporal  who  did 
our  little  marketing,  that  with  the  best  money, 
or  with  the  largest  amount  of  the  worst  money, 
there  was  hardly  anything  in  the  market  to  buy. 
Some  considerate  authority  in  Washington,  bear 
ing  in  mind  that  the  paroled  officers  would 
have  expenses  to  meet,  had  had  the  thought  of 
sending  down  with  our  other  goods  a  chest  of  Con 
federate  money  taken  from  the  supplies  that  had 
as  a  result  of  captures  accumulated  in  Washington 


78  Millions  of  Money 

during  the  four  years.  My  receipt  was  given  at 
the  boat  for  "one  chest  of  money,  precise  contents 
unknown."  There  were  in  that  chest  millions 
upon  millions  of  dollars,  more,  in  volume  at  least, 
than  I  had  ever  dreamed  of  possessing.  In  send 
ing  our  man  to  market,  I  used  to  take  from  the 
chest  armfuls  of  money,  jamming  it  into  the 
market  basket  until  the  basket  would  hold  no 
more.  In  exchange  for  this  mass  of  "legal  ten 
der,"  we  would  receive  a  dozen  or  two  ears  of 
corn  or  a  little  ground  meal,  and  now  and  then 
as  a  special  luxury  a  piece  of  mule  steak.  I 
remember  one  morning  our  man,  with  no  little 
air  of  triumph,  brought  in  an  egg.  I  was 
afraid  to  ask  how  many  thousand  dollars  had 
been  paid  for  that  egg.  Said  the  general,  "Gen 
tlemen,  I  do  not  usually  claim  the  privileges 
of  rank,  but  it  is  my  impression  that  that  egg 
properly  belongs  to  the  officer  in  command."  We 
naturally  raised  no  objection,  and  when  the  egg, 
having  been  boiled,  was  placed  upon  the  table 
and  the  top  was  taken  off,  it  was  the  unanimous 
decision  that  as  far  as  rank  was  concerned,  it  could 
be  appropriated  by  anybody  who  wanted  it. 


Where  Are  Our  "  Deposits  "  ?       79 

That  egg  must  have  been  laid  between  the   lines 
during  several  campaigns. 

We  had  expected  to  make  a  long  sojourn  in 
Richmond,  but  within  a  fortnight  of  our  arrival, 
we  got  news  that  the  long- delayed  exchange  had 
been  finally  declared.  I  think  my  work  on  parole 
lasted  in  all  about  three  weeks.  When  we  heard 
that  a  date  had  been  fixed  for  our  departure,  I 
reminded  the  general  that  we  had  still  to  receive 
from  the  adjutant  of  Libby  Prison  a  report  con 
cerning  the  moneys  that  had  been  taken  from  us. 
I  recalled  the  memorandum  book  in  which  the 
amounts  had  been  entered  and  the  promise  that 
these  should  be  returned  to  us  at  the  close  of  our 
imprisonment.  The  general  was  himself  interested 
to  the  extent  of  some  hundreds  of  dollars  and  he 
promptly  instructed  me  to  present  his  compliments 
at  the  office  of  Commissioner  Ould  and  to  ask  for 
an  accounting.  At  this  late  period  in  the  cam 
paign,  the  commissioner  was  a  difficult  man  to  find, 
but  after  various  calls  I  finally  succeeded  in  secur 
ing  an  interview  and  in  giving  him  the  message. 
I  took  the  liberty  of  adding  a  statement  of  my 
own  personal  interest  in  the  matter.  One  hundred 


80  Commissioner  Ould 

and  fifty  dollars  loomed  very  large  in  my  memory 
and  it  certainly  represented  hard  earnings.  The 
commissioner  seemed  embarrassed.  "Adjutant," 
he  said,  "the  officer  who  had  charge  of  that  part 
of  the  prison  business  in  October  last  is  now  dead, 
and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  there  was  some  con 
fusion  in  his  accounts.  Of  course,  however,  you 
gentlemen  ought  to  have  your  money.  I  will  look 
into  the  matter  and  see  what  can  now  be  done." 
I  reminded  the  commissioner  that  we  were  to 
leave  for  the  North  at  an  early  date  and  asked  if 
I  could  call  the  next  day.  I  got  an  appointment 
but  I  did  not  find  my  commissioner.  And  it  was 
only  after  delivering  through  his  secretary  a  rather 
peremptory  note  from  the  general,  that  I  did 
succeed  in  securing  a  further  word  with  him. 
"The  general  directs  me  to  say,  Commissioner, 
that  he  will  take  to  Washington  such  report  in 
regard  to  these  moneys  as  you  see  fit  to  send.  If 
the  Confederate  authorities  instruct  us  to  say 
that  they  are  unable  to  trace  the  record  of  these 
deposits  and  to  make  good  the  promise  given  by 
the  prison  officials,  the  general  will  carry  such 
statement  to  Washington."  "  No,  no,  Adjutant," 


Trading  in  Danville  81 

said  the  commissioner  with  some  annoyed  hesi 
tation.  "  Of  course,  we  do  not  wish  any  such  report 
to  go  out.  It  is  a  mere  matter  of  detail  and  book 
keeping.  The  money  will  of  course  be  forthcom 
ing."  "I  am  instructed,  sir,"  I  replied,  "to  call 
again  to-morrow  in  case  I  can  not  secure  your 
report  to-day."  I  did  call  on  the  morrow,  but  to 
no  purpose.  I  called  for  the  last  time  the  day 
following  and  waited  until  within  fifteen  minutes 
of  the  departure  of  the  boat;  but  finally  decided 
that  home  and  freedom  were  of  more  value  than 
a  claim  against  the  Confederate  government  for 
$150,  and  leaving  my  name,  I  made  a  quick  run 
for  the  wharf. 

I  learned  later  from  the  reports  of  my  prison 
comrades  some  of  the  incidents  of  their  journey 
from  Danville  to  Richmond.  As  soon  as  the  an 
nouncement  was  made  that  the  exchange  had  been 
effected  and  that  our  men  were  to  leave  immedi 
ately  for  the  North,  traders  from  the  town  made 
their  way  into  the  prison  with  offers  of  money  to 
such  of  the  prisoners  as  were  able  to  give  an  im 
pression  of  financial  responsibility,  and  of  having 
at  home  fathers  or  other  correspondents  who 


82  Trading  in  Danville 

would  be  likely  to  honour  their  drafts.  If  these 
Danville  traders  could  have  been  induced  earlier 
in  the  winter  to  hand  over  Confederate  money  in 
exchange  for  drafts  on  the  North,  much  suffering 
would  have  been  avoided  and  undoubtedly  some 
lives  would  have  been  saved.  I  imagine  that  the 
certainty  that  the  Confederacy  was  approaching 
its  downfall  constituted  an  important  influence 
in  bringing  these  traders  to  the  conclusion  that 
with  the  prospect  of  very  satisfactory  profit  on 
the  drafts  that  were  honoured,  they  could  afford 
to  take  the  risk  on  some  of  the  more  doubtful 
clients.  The  offers  were,  if  I  recollect  rightly,  at 
the  rate  of  exchange  of  one  hundred  blue-back 
dollars  for  one  greenback.  The  actual  ''value, "  if 
the  blue-back  could  have  been  said  at  that  time  to 
have  any  real  value,  would  have  been  more  nearly 
at  the  rate  of  one  thousand  to  one.  Of  course; 
in  accordance  with  the  usual  army  practice,  if  one 
man  secured  funds,  money  was  available  for  every 
one  who  was  in  need.  The  train  was  made  up  but 
slowly  and  the  guards  had  no  reason  to  be  parti 
cularly  watchful  of  their  prisoners,  none  of  whom 
had  any  desire  to  remain  in  Danville.  There 


Trading  in  Danville  83 

was,  therefore,  plenty  of  time  with  the  aid  of  this 
newly  acquired  wealth  to  make  purchases  in  the 
town  before  starting  for  Richmond.  Shoes  were 
secured  and  something  in  the  form  of  jackets  and 
trousers.  I  imagine  that  our  men  preferred  to 
wear  butternut  garments  that  were  complete 
rather  than  to  remain  in  blue  cloth  rags. 

It  was  only  when  our  men  came  to  visit  the 
Danville  shops  that  they  realised  how  trifling  was 
the  value  of  the  blue-back  currency  in  exchange 
for  which  they  had  just  given  good  money  in  drafts 
on  their  fathers  in  the  North.  Dealers  are  usually 
glad  to  make  sales,  but  in  March,  1865,  the  wise 
shop-keeper  preferred  to  hold  on  to  his  shoes  and 
blouses  rather  than  to  exchange  them  for  pieces  of 
paper  which  in  the  course  of  a  few  days  would 
have  no  market  value  whatsoever.  Shoes  were 
quoted  at  two  thousand  dollars;  and  blouses  and 
rough  shirts  were  held  at  corresponding  prices. 
The  boys  were  disappointed  to  find  that  they 
had  not  secured  through  their  drafts  enough  money 
to  obtain  any  satisfactory  outfits,  and  they  were 
not  allowed  the  time  for  further  financial  opera 
tions  or  for  another  shopping  expedition.  Some 


84  Results  of  Apple-jack 

supplies  of  food  were  also  bought  which  proved 

• 
useful  enough  for  the  journey   to  Richmond,   a 

trip  the  length  of  which  was  seriously  increased 
by  the  frequent  siding  of  the  train.  Certain  of 
the  officers  were  injudicious  enough  to  include  with 
their  purchases  some  apple-jack  rum,  but  I  was 
told  that,  realising  the  certainty  of  disaster  if, 
after  so  long  a  period  of  starvation  any  drinking 
was  indulged  in,  they  did  not  use  the  rum  or  any 
serious  quantity  of  it  for  themselves,  but  partly 
as  a  matter  of  policy  and  partly  as  a  joke,  gave 
it  to  the  guards. 

According  to  the  story  as  it  came  to  me,  by 
the  time  they  reached  Richmond  late  in  the 
evening  of  the  second  day,  these  guards,  with 
the  exception  of  the  officer  in  command  and 
his  orderly  sergeant,  were  so  drunk  that  there 
was  no  possibility  of  steering  them  with  any 

;tid  of  decent  discipline  across  Richmond  with 
e  prisoners.  In  fact,  many  of  them,  lying  down 
L  the  platform  of  the  station,  refused  to  move  at 
all.  The  lieutenant  in  command,  a  one-armed 
veteran  of  not  a  bad  sort,  was  in  a  state  of  perplex 
ity  and  mortification.  Our  officers  were  ready, 


"We  Must  Get  into  Libby"         85 

however,  to  cheer  him  up.  "Don't  be  troubled, 
Lieutenant.  We  '11  find  our  way  across  to  Libby 
Prison  without  a  guard.  You  can  come  over  in 
the  morning  with  your  guard  and  you  will  find 
us  all  ready  to  answer  roll-call.  Of  course,"  they 
added,  "we  are  not  going  to  be  out  of  the  way  to 
morrow  morning.  We  've  got  to  get  to  Libby. 
We  have  business  in  the  North."  There  was 
nothing  else  for  the  lieutenant  to  do,  and  he  let 
the  Yankees  leave  the  station  in  their  own  way. 
Our  boys  tramped  across  the  town  very  much  as. 
they  chose.  Not  all  of  them  knew  the  way  and 
those  who  did  were  not  interested  in  going  straight. 
When  they  encountered  any  of  the  town  guards, 
their  word  was  very  simple.  They  were  poor 
Yankee  prisoners  who,  wanting  to  go  to  Libby 
Prison,  had  lost  their  way.  They  managed,  ac 
cording  to  the  story,  to  have  a  good  deal  of  fun 
that  night.  They  straggled  over  the  town,  seeing 
the  sights,  being  arrested  from  time  to  time  and 
"honourably  discharged,"  but  in  the  end,  as  pro 
mised,  all  making  their  way  to  the  entrance  of  Mr. 
Libby 's  ship-chandlery  warehouse.  The  prison 
sergeant  must  have  had  a  wearisome  night.  He 


86  The  Old  Flag 

was  called  up  from  hour  to  hour  to  let  in  the 
straggling  Yankees.  "You  must  let  us  in,"  was 
the  demand.  "We  are  poor  stray  Yankees  with 
no  other  place  to  go  to.  We  must  get  into  Libby." 
At  no  other  time  during  the  war  was  that  old 
building,  so  full  of  sad  memories,  a  place  into 
which  entrance  was  desired.  The  next  morning, 
the  one-armed  lieutenant  came  over  with  his 
sergeant  and  with  a  fair  quorum  of  his  resusci 
tated  guard.  The  roll  was  called,  the  Yankees 
were  found  to  be  all  on  hand,  and  the  lieutenant 
got  his  receipt  and  freed  himself  from  further 
responsibility.  It  was  with  the  fresh  memory  of 
this  last  practical  joke  in  their  minds  that  I  found 
my  comrades  on  reaching  the  flag  of  truce  boat  at 
the  wharf  behind  Libby.  Worn  and  weak  as  they 
were,  many  of  them,  in  fact,  seriously  invalided 
and  not  a  few  never  to  recover  any  measure 
of  health  or  strength,  they  were  all  cheered  up 
with  the  realisation  that  they  were  again  beneath 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  and  with  the  certainty  that 
home  and  loved  ones  were  within  reach. 

The  trip  down  the  James  River  was  interesting 
on  more  grounds  than  one.     We  had  a  glimpse  of 


The  James  River  87 

the  camps  of  the  Army  of  the  James  and  a  full 
view  of  the  great  depots  which  the  commissaries 
and  quartermasters  had  established  along  the  river. 
We  passed  in  the  upper  region  of  the  stream,  the 
one  or  two  vessels  remaining  of  the  Confederate 
James  River  Fleet,  while  near  Bermuda  Hundred 
(if  I  recall  the  locality  correctly)  we  ran  over  the 
wrecks  of  certain  Confederate  gunboats  which 
had  been  smashed  by  our  own  vessels  or  batteries. 
A  little  below  Bermuda  Hundred  we  passed 
another  flag  of  truce  boat  bringing  up-stream  the 
Confederate  prisoners  who  had  been  exchanged 
for  us.  The  boats  passed  near  enough  for  a 
fairly  trustworthy  inspection  of  the  passengers, 
and  we  could  not  but  feel  that,  as  far  as  military 
effectiveness  was  concerned,  our  government  was 
making  a  bad  bargain.  The  Southern  troops  had 
had  clothing  issued  to  them  by  our  own  prison 
quartermasters,  and  some  of  them,  who  had  passed 
through  Baltimore,  had  also  been  fitted  out  with 
additional  equipment  by  sympathising  friends. 
They  looked  sturdy  and  fit  for  service.  I  admit 
that  such  hasty  views  as  it  was  possible  to  secure 
while  the  boats  were  passing  could  hardly  be 


88      Protection  of  Coloured  Troops 

accepted  as  historic  evidence,  but  our  impressions 
were  confirmed  by  the  later  history. 

The  long  delay  in  arriving  at  the  exchange  had, 
as  I  understand,  been  due  to  two  causes.  The 
Southerners  had  from  an  early  period  in  the  war 
taken  the  stand  that  negro  troops  who  had  been, 
or  who  might  have  been,  slaves  should  not  be 
exchanged,  and  the  same  prohibition  was  to  hold 
against  the  white  officers  of  the  negro  regiments. 
Lincoln  took  the  ground  (very  properly)  that  all 
the  United  States  soldiers  must  be  protected  alike, 
and  that  until  the  negro  troops  and  their  white 
officers  could  be  assured  of  receiving  as  prisoners 
the  same  treatment  that  was  accorded  to  the  other 
prisoners  and  could  be  placed  upon  the  same  basis 
for  exchange  lists,  the  exchange  should  be  stopped. 
The  block  of  the  exchange  on  this  ground  continued 
for  a  series  of  months,  and  then,  under  the  pressure 
of  requirement  from  the  generals  demanding  to 
have  their  ranks  filled  up,  Davis  conceded  the 
point  and  consented  to  the  re-establishment  of 
exchange  arrangements.  He  agreed  also,  at  least 
in  form,  to  give  to  the  negro  prisoners  and  to  the 
officers  of  their  regiments  the  same  treatment  that 


Stanton  and  the  Exchange          89 

was  accorded  to  the  others.  As  a  fact,  however, 
as  far  as  we  had  the  opportunity  of  hearing  the 
prison  gossip,  both  the  privates  and  the  officers  of 
the  coloured  regiments  had  a  specially  hard  time. 
The  exchange  was  later  blocked  under  a  policy 
for  which,  I  believe,  Secretary  Stanton  must  take 
the  responsibility.  In  one  of  his  letters  of  1864, 
he  pointed  out  that  it  would  not  be  good  policy 
to  send  back  to  be  placed  again  on  the  fighting 
line,  70,000  able-bodied  Confederates,  and  to 
receive  in  exchange  men  who,  with  but  few  ex 
ceptions,  were  not  strong  enough  to  hold  their 
muskets.  Stanton,  while  arbitrary,  was  not  a 
cruel  man.  I  doubt  whether  his  judgment  in 
this  matter  was  sound,  because  it  was  not  fair 
to  our  own  prisoners  or  to  the  army  as  a  whole. 
The  conclusions  that  he  reached,  after  having  in 
his  hands  reports  from  the  Northern  prisons  and 
reports  of  the  examination  of  the  men  who  were 
being  returned  from  the  Southern  prisons,  were 
undoubtedly  however  based  upon  a  pretty  clear 
understanding  of  the  actual  conditions.  The 
exchange  finally  brought  about  on  the  first  of 
March,  1865,  was  probably  the  result  in  the  main 


90  Annapolis 

of  pressure  brought  to  bear  upon  Stanton,  through 
President  Lincoln,  on  the  part  of  the  relatives  of 
the  prisoners  and  of  the  leaders  in  the  field  who 
took  the  ground  that  our  soldiers  were  entitled 
to  protection  and  to  a  fair  chance  for  life,  whether 
they  were  prisoners  or  not. 

Our  particular  group  of  "exchanged  rubbish" 
was  taken  to  Annapolis,  and  we  were  kept  there 
for  a  week  or  more  before  being  allowed  to  be 
distributed  to  our  homes.  I  believe  the  purpose 
was  to  get  us  cleaned  up,  as  it  was  not  considered 
good  form  to  send  to  decent  Northern  homes  men 
who  were  still  infected  with  vermin.  The  three 
or  four  of  us  who,  having  been  on  parole,  had  al 
ready  done  our  cleaning  up,  naturally  protested, 
and  I  think  we  were  finally  permitted  to  get  away 
a  day  or  two  before  the  others. 

It  was  true  also  that  a  considerable  proportion 
of  the  men  were  actually  not  strong  enough  to 
travel,  and  had  to  be  toned  up  with  care  and  with 
a  gradual  increase  of  nourishment.  There  were 
in  fact  quite  a  number  of  deaths  in  Annapolis 
of  men  who,  having  waited  patiently  for  months, 
were  not  to  be  permitted  after  all  again  to  see 


Condition  of  Prisoners  91 

their  homes.  As  far  as  I  was  able  to  judge  from 
the  reports  given  by  the  surgeons  in  charge  of  the 
depot  in  Annapolis,  and  by  the  information  secured 
later,  but  very  few  of  the  prisoners  who  were 
returned  under  the  exchange  of  March,  1865,  were 
fitted  for  further  service,  or  ever  did  get  back  to 
the  front.  I  must  myself  have  belonged  to  the 
tougher  lot  for  I  was,  after  a  fortnight's  rest,  ad 
judged  fit  for  service,  but  after  reporting  to  my 
regiment,  I  did  not  again  meet  in  the  field  a  single 
one  of  my  old-time  prison  associates. 

I  learned  when  reporting  for  duty  (by  letter  to 
the  Adjutant-General  in  Washington)  that  my 
regiment  which  still  belonged  to  Grover's  divis 
ion  of  the  iQth  Army  Corps,  was  stationed  at 
Newbern,  North  Carolina.  The  transportation 
given  to  me  from  the  Quartermaster's  Department, 
fixed  a  route  from  Norfolk  through  the  Great 
Dismal  Swamp  Canal,  and  then  by  way  of  Albe- 
marle  and  Pamlico  Sounds  to  Morehead  City. 
This  was  a  part  of  the  South  that  I  had  never 
visited,  and  I  found  the  journey  novel  and  inter 
esting.  The  little  boat  used  for  the  canal  was 
modest  in  dimensions,  and  its  engine  gave  it  a 


92         The  Dismal  Swamp  Canal 

speed  of  about  six  miles  an  hour.  We  were  told 
that  there  were  in  the  swamp  hundreds,  or  per 
haps  thousands  of  refugees  and  deserters,  coloured 
and  white,  and  that  boats  on  the  canal  were  sub 
ject  to  attack.  I  judge  that  the  attacks  were  made 
not  so  much  for  the  service  of  the  Confederacy  as 
for  the  purpose  of  plunder.  Our  boat  was  armed 
with  a  little  Catling  gun,  or  possibly  a  gun  of  some 
patent  preceding  the  Catling.  According  to  my 
memory,  the  gun  was  a  very  crude  affair,  and 
certainly  needed  development  to  become  an  ef 
ficient  instrument.  Its  range  was  short,  as  it  had 
been  planned  for  the  purpose  of  throwing  grape- 
shot  or  musket-balls  as  a  volley  for  a  few  hundred 
feet  only.  It  was,  therefore,  not  ill-fitted  for  the 
particular  work  now  required  to  keep  the  banks 
of  the  river  clear  from  skirmishers.  The  cartridges 
were,  as  I  remember,  thrown  into  a  hopper  and 
the  gun,  having  been  sighted,  was  worked  with  a 
kind  of  crank.  This  sent  out  the  balls  in  a  more 
or  less  continuous  volley  until  the  supply  in  the 
hopper  was  exhausted.  One  of  the  defects  of  the 
armament  was  that  there  was  no  protection  for 
the  man  working  the  hopper.  We  came  under 


An  Early  Catling  93 

fire  several  times  during  our  trip,  and  one  hopper- 
gunner  was  wounded.  On  the  whole,  however, 
our  volleys  proved  effective  in  clearing  the  bushes 
along  the  canal;  but  it  was,  nevertheless,  satis 
factory  to  emerge  from  the  dark  and  dubious 
recesses  of  the  swamp  into  the  open  waters  of  Al- 
bemarle  Sound,  and  to  be  transferred  to  the  larger 
boat  which  took  charge  of  the  United  States  mails 
and  supplies.  Our  trip  from  the  mouth  of  the  canal 
to  Morehead  City  was  uneventful,  being  varied 
only  with  an  occasional  running  aground.  The 
sound  had  many  shallows  and  the  old-time  beacons 
had  disappeared,  and  I  judge  that  navigation  must 
have  been  difficult.  From  Morehead  City,  we 
made  our  way  by  rail,  a  very  uneven  and  jolting 
rail,  to  Newbern.  There,  I  had  the  satisfaction  of 
reporting  to  my  regiment  and  of  securing  the  kind 
of  greeting  that  comes  to  a  comrade  whom  they 
had  not  expected  to  see  again.  The  Department 
of  North  Carolina  was  at  that  time  under  the  com 
mand  of  General  Terry.  The  General  enjoyed  the 
distinction  of  being  possibly  the  only  civilian  Gen 
eral  officer,  that  is  to  say  General  officer  who  had 
had  no  previous  military  training,  who  had  dur- 


94  General  Terry 

ing  an  active  service  of  four  years  "made  good" 
with  every  responsibility  that  was  placed  upon 
him,  and  who  retained  at  the  close  of  the  war, 
with  credit  to  himself  and  with  full  advantage  to 
the  service,  an  independent  command. 

While  at  Newbern,  I  had  knowledge  of  an  ex 
ample  of  heroism  that  deserved  a  larger  measure 
of  appreciation  and  of  honour  than  was  ever  given 
to  it.  Several  representatives  of  the  Sanitary  and 
Christian  Commissions  were  working  in  the  de 
partment  giving  service  to  the  soldiers,  not  only 
to  the  invalids,  but  to  those  who  while  well  enough 
for  duty  were  glad  to  receive  reading  matter  and 
to  secure  help  in  the  writing  of  their  letters;  but 
probably  the  larger  portion  of  their  labour  was 
devoted  to  the  contrabands.  A  contraband  camp 
had,  under  the  orders  of  the  commander,  been 
established  at  a  distance  of  a  mile  or  two  from  the 
town  into  which  had  been  corralled  the  darkies, 
young  and  old,  who  were  continually  making  their 
way  into  the  lines  and  calling  for  protection  and 
for  food.  The  able-bodied  fellows  were  utilised, 
as  far  as  requirement  came,  for  manual  labour 
about  the  Post  and  for  personal  service  to  the 


The  Contraband  Camps  95 

officers.  The  quartermaster  issued  the  most 
needful  articles  of  clothing  and  the  commissary 
gave  a  half  ration,  which  was  so  much  in  advance 
of  what  the  people  had  been  accustomed  to  receive 
that  it  had  for  them  the  effect  of  the  highest  luxury. 
During  the  weeks  of  my  sojourn  in  Newbern, 
smallpox  broke  out  in  this  contraband  camp,  and 
it  became  necessary  for  the  protection  of  the  town 
and  of  the  soldiers,  to  shut  off  at  once  and  abso 
lutely  communication  between  the  contrabands 
and  the  Post  and  settlements.  A  cordon  of  sen 
tries  was  drawn  around  the  camp,  and  no  one  was 
allowed  to  pass  one  way  or  the  other.  Food  was 
placed  by  the  sentries  at  points  at  which  it  could 
be  secured  and  taken  into  camp  by  the  negroes, 
but  there  was  at  the  time  at  least  no  medical  aid 
and,  according  to  the  gossip  that  leaked  out 
through  the  sentry  lines,  the  stronger  men  and 
women  were  taking  possession  of  the  food,  and 
those  who  were  sick  were  dying  from  starvation 
as  well  as  from  the  pest.  Impressed  with  the 
accounts  of  the  conditions  and  of  the  misery  under 
which  the  coloured  community  was  suffering,  two 
representatives  of  the  Christian  Mission,  Vincent 


96  Colyer  and  Smallpox 

Colyer,  an  artist  of  New  York,  with  an  associate 
whose  name  I  have  forgotten,  had  an  interview 
with  General  Terry  and  the  post  surgeon  and  of 
fered  to  take  charge  of  the  contraband  camp.  The 
surgeon  emphasised,  naturally,  that  if  these  men 
once  crossed  the  picket  line  they  could  not  come 
back  to  civilisation  until  the  pest  had  been  stamped 
out,  but  that  condition  Colyer,  of  course,  already 
understood.  The  authorities  were  well  pleased 
to  accept  the  service  and  sacrifice  offered,  because, 
under  the  existing  conditions,  the  risk  of  infection 
for  the  town  and  for  the  troops  was  very  serious. 
Colyer  and  his  friend  made  their  way  across  the 
lines,  taking  with  them  medicines  and  supplies. 
They  arranged  for  a  trustworthy  system  for  the 
sending  out  of  reports  of  conditions  and  for  the 
receipt  from  day  to  day  of  the  further  supplies 
that  would  be  required.  I  learned  afterwards 
that  they  had  found  in  the  camp  a  kind  of  pande 
monium.  The  sick  were  dying  without  attendance, 
and  the  old  people,  the  women  and  children,  and 
the  feeble  folk  generally,  overawed  by  those  who 
were  stronger,  were  not  getting  any  adequate  share 
of  the  provisions  that  had  been  placed  within 


Colyer  and  Smallpox  97 

reach.  Colyer  organised,  under  threat  of  severe 
punishment  for  any  disobedience,  the  men  who 
were  strong  enough  into  gangs  for  burying  the 
dead,  for  caring  for  the  sick,  and  for  doing  the 
cleaning  up  that  was  urgently  required.  The  wom 
en,  encouraged  by  the  presence  of  trustworthy 
authority,  took  charge  again  of  the  cooking  and 
washing.  Whatever  treatment  was  necessary  had 
to  be  carried  out,  and  was  carried  out,  without 
direct  medical  aid.  In  the  course  of  a  few  weeks' 
time,  smallpox  was  stamped  out  and  Colyer  and 
his  associate,  who  had  fortunately  escaped  the 
contagion,  were  free  to  return  to  civilisation.  It 
was  the  kind  of  service  that  deserved  the  American 
equivalent  of  the  Victoria  Cross  or  of  the  Cross  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour ;  but  as  far  as  I  know,  no 
official  recognition  other  than  the  thanks  of  Gen 
eral  Terry  and  of  the  post  surgeon,  were  ever 
given  to  these  two  devoted  patriots. 

I  did  not  find  myself  attracted  with  the  region 
of  Eastern  North  Carolina.  The  land  is  low  and 
in  no  way  picturesque.  The  fighting  portion  of 
the  inhabitants  had  for  years  been  busied  else 
where.  It  is,  I  believe,  on  record  that  North 


98  Eastern  North  Carolina 

Carolina  contributed  to  the  army,  a  larger  portion 
of  troops  (not  only  in  proportion  to  its  population 
but  in  the  absolute  aggregate)  than  any  other 
State  in  the  Confederacy.  The  men  of  the  North 
had  reason  to  know  from  experience  on  many  a 
hardly  contested  battle-field  that  the  "tar-heels" 
could  fight.  What  we  saw  of  the  homes  of  these 
North  Carolina  citizens  on  the  eastern  coast  did 
not  give  us  a  favourable  impression  of  their  stand 
ard  of  comfort.  Not  a  few  of  the  women  of  the 
poorer  class  had  impaired  their  complexions  and 
any  beauty  that  their  mouths  might  once  have  had, 
by  the  practice  of  clay-eating  or  snuff-dipping. 
In  looking  over  the  dreary  little  cottages  on  the 
coast,  I  recalled  the  description  given  in  Olmsted's 
Seaboard  Slave  States.  This  book,  published  in 
1858,  gave  an  account  of  a  trip  taken  on  horse 
back  by  an  intelligent  Yankee  farmer  from  Vir 
ginia  along  the  coast  to  Jacksonville.  Olmsted's 
descriptions  of  the  condition  of  the  South  just 
before  the  war  have  often  been  compared  to  those 
given  by  Arthur  Young  in  his  Travels  in  France 
written  a  year  or  two  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
Revolution  of  1783.  Olmsted  writes  with  reserve, 


Helper's  Impending  Crisis  99 

but  he  makes  clear  that  the  commercial  founda 
tions  of  the  Southern  planters  were  unsound,  and 
it  was  evident  to  him  that  trouble  of  some  kind 
was  near  at  hand.  It  has  in  fact  been  made  clear 
by  the  later  history,  that  the  impending  bank 
ruptcy  of  thousands  of  the  great  planters,  lead 
ers  in  society  and  in  politics,  while,  of  course,  not 
one  of  the  larger  causes  of  the  war,  was  a  not 
unimportant  influence  in  hastening  events.  Olm- 
sted's  book  has  been  kept  in  print,  and  half  a 
century  later  it  is  still  the  acknowledged  authority 
on  its  subject. 

Another  volume  which  brought  out  much  more 
excitement  at  the  time  was  likewise  connected 
with  North  Carolina.  In  1859  was  published  by 
an  active-minded  North  Carolina  citizen  named 
Hinton  Rowan  Helper,  a  volume  called  The 
Impending  Crisis.  In  this  book,  Helper,  who 
was  evidently  a  keen  observer,  describes  the 
resources  of  the  South  and  the  conditions  of  its 
prosperity.  He  points  out  that  these  conditions 
rested  on  an  insecure  foundation.  He  is  confident 
that  commercial  trouble  is  near  at  hand,  and  he 
sees  that  this  expectation  must,  of  necessity,  ac- 


ioo  Sherman  and  Johnston 

centuate  the  political  unrest.  He  points  out 
further  that  the  belief  in  the  wealth  of  the  South 
was  largely  exaggerated.  I  remember  among 
other  details  he  mentions  that  the  value  of  the 
hay  crop  in  the  North  was  greater  than  that  of 
the  entire  cotton  crop.  Helper's  keen  analysis 
and  unsatisfactory  conclusions  proved  very  dis 
tasteful  to  his  neigbours  in  North  Carolina,  as  to 
the  South  generally.  The  book  became  the  text 
for  bitter  controversies  in  Washington,  and  its 
author  was  for  years  banished  from  Southern  soil. 
The  historians  of  to-day  understand  the  value  and 
the  importance  of  the  descriptions  given  by  these 
two  authors  and  the  substantial  trustworthiness 
of  their  descriptions  and  predictions. 

Early  in  April,  Terry  received  orders  to  abandon 
the  posts  and  garrisons  on  the  coast,  and  to  col 
lect  every  fighting  musket  that  he  had  available 
to  make  a  line  between  the  Goldsboro  region 
and  the  Virginia  border.  Sherman  was  coming 
North  from  Columbia,  and  was  anxious  that 
Johnston,  who  was,  with  his  old-time  skill  and 
persistency,  making  the  best  possible  defensive 
fight  with  his  retreating  army,  should  be  prevented 


Stores  of  Corn-meal  161 

from  joining  forces  with  Lee.  Sherman  had  had 
news  of  the  breaking  of  the  lines  in  front  of 
Richmond,  and  he  realised  that  the  purpose  of 
Lee  and  Johnston  would  be  to  get  together  for  a 
final  struggle  somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Danville.  The  battalions  available  were  gathered 
in  from  the  coast  and  marched  through  the  State 
towards  Goldsboro  and  my  command  was  finally 
placed  at  Durham  Station. 

The  Commissary- General,  in  ransacking  the 
country  for  supplies,  reported  that  he  found  sub 
stantial  stores  of  corn-meal  and  of  corn  on  the 
cob  in  various  warehouses  in  Goldsboro  and  in 
other  stations  in  the  region.  These  had,  of  course, 
been  collected  for  the  needs  of  the  army  in  Virginia. 
Those  of  us  who  had  recently  been  prisoners  in 
Danville,  close  to  the  North  Carolina  line,  and 
who  knew  about  the  conditions  obtaining  in  the 
infamous  prison  of  Salisbury,  a  few  miles  to  the 
west,  realised  that,  with  these  stores  of  corn  avail 
able,  there  had  been  no  excuse  for  the  starvation 
rations  upon  which  the  prisoners  had  tried  to  live, 
and  as  a  result  of  which  so  many  of  our  prisoners 
had  failed  to  live,  both  in  Danville  and  in  Salisbury. 


io2  Sherman  Ends  the  War 

The  knowledge  that  food  had  been  within  easy 
reach  of  prisons  in  which  the  lives  of  our  comrades 
had  been  sacrificed  on  starvation  rations,  gave  us 
a  renewed  feeling  of  indignation  against  those 
who  were  chiefly  responsible  for  the  management 
of  the  prisons  of  the  South, — Jefferson  Davis, 
General  Winder,  and  Commissioner  Ould. 

Terry  was  able  to  make  some  show  of  troops 
between  Goldsboro  and  the  roads  to  Virginia; 
but  the  line  was  very  thin  and  could  not  have 
withstood  any  well-directed  attack  from  an  army 
like  Johnston's.  Sherman  kept  himself,  however, 
so  close  on  the  heels  of  the  retreating  Confederates 
that  General  Johnston,  plucky  and  persistent  as 
he  was,  had  found  it  impracticable  to  break  away 
northward  and  our  thin  line  was  never  attacked. 

The  events  that  followed  are  matters  of  well- 
known  history.  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  standing 
in  line  with  my  regiment  when  General  Johnston 
surrendered  at  Durham  Station  the  last  effective 
army  of  the  Confederacy.  The  war  was  at  an 
end,  and  the  Republic  had  been  maintained. 

A  fortnight  before  the  dramatic  event  at 
Durham  Station,  there  came  to  our  troops  the 


Death  of  Lincoln  103 

overpowering  sorrow  of  the  news  of  the  death  of 
Lincoln.  The  work  to  which  the  Great  Captain 
had  devoted  his  best  years  and  had  now  sacrificed 
his  life,  was  in  a  sense  completed.  He  had  carried 
out  his  pledge  of  maintaining  the  life  of  the  Nation. 
I  have  described  elsewhere  the  manner  in  which 
the  news  of  the  death  of  the  great  Leader  came  to 
the  soldiers  and  the  way  in  which  they  received  it. 
I  found  myself  a  unit  in  the  crowd  of  ten  thousand 
men  all  overpowered  by  the  same  emotion.  Never 
before  had  I  seen  thousands  of  grown  men  sobbing 
together.  It  is  impossible  now,  fifty  years  after 
the  event,  to  recall  the  feeling  of  that  day  without 
being  again  touched  with  the  wave  of  emotion. 

The  sorrow  came  not  only  to  the  Army  and  to 
the  North;  the  South  came  later  to  realise  how 
great  had  been  the  loss,  for  its  own  pressing  needs, 
in  the  death  of  the  shrewd,  kindly,  sympathetic, 
far-seeing  President.  Lincoln,  with  his  old-time 
knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with  the  problems  of 
the  South,  would  have  given  in  full  measure  his 
thought  and  vitality  to  the  service  of  the  great 
communities  that  were  now  desolate  and  that  were 
in  urgent  need  of  the  guidance  of  the  National 


104          The  Loss  to  the  South 

Government  and  of  help  and  resources  from  their 
late  opponents.  We  may  feel  confident  that 
Lincoln's  influence  would  have  prevailed  with  the 
leaders  of  Northern  opinion,  that  wiser  policies 
would  have  directed  reconstruction  and  that  the 
South  would  have  accepted  cordially  the  hand  of 
fellowship  extended  for  its  recuperation  and  re 
organisation. 

The  discouraging  and  mortifying  experiences  of 
the  reconstruction  years  would  have  been  avoided 
or  would  at  least  have  been  very  much  minimised. 
There  was  no  other  man  in  the  country  who  could 
have  taken  hold  of  the  complex  problems  with  any 
similar  prospect  of  success.  The  death  of  Lincoln 
was  a  most  serious  misfortune  in  the  way  of  re- 
constitution  of  the  Republic,  and  it  took  years  of 
sad  experience  to  bring  back  to  the  policies  that 
Lincoln  would  assuredly  have  advocated  and  have 
directed,  the  men  who  became  responsible  for  the 
conduct  of  the  National  Government. 


THE    END 


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G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  YorK  London 


Gettysburg  and  Lincoln 

The  Battle,  the  Cemetery,  and 
the  National  Park 

By  Henry  Sweetser  Burrage 

Brevet  Major  U.  S.  Vols. 


With  27  Full-page  Illustrations  and  3  Battle  Plans. 
8vo.     $1.50  net.     By  mail,  $1.65. 

Gettysburg  will  always  be  famous  as  one  of  the  great  battle 
fields  of  the  world,  and  as  the  place  where  was  fought  the 
decisive  battle  of  the  Civil  War.  The  victory  there  won  for  the 
Union  Cause  was  commemorated  by  the  establishing  of  the 
beautiful  National  Park  in  which  is  the  Cemetery  that  contains 
the  graves  and  monuments  of  the  soldiers  who  then  gave  their 
lives  for  their  country — a  spot  that  will  always  be  the  goal  of 
patriotic  pilgrims.  The  consecration  of  the  Cemetery  was  the 
occasion  of  Lincoln's  famous  Address,  which  ranks  among  the 
great  historic  speeches  of  the  world,  and  which  is,  in  the  simple 
grandeur  and  nobility  of  its  eloquence,  so  essentially  characteristic 
of  the  man.  Major  Burrage,  himself  a  War  veteran,  brings  together 
in  this  volume,  which  is  illustrated,  and  equipped  with  tactical 
maps,  the  records  of  the  Battle,  the  Park,  the  Cemetery,  and  the 
Lincoln  Address. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  London 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


:  -     - 


JAR  Is  1959 


O 


-j : , ------ 

• 

OUENRLF  JUN 


LD  21-100m-6,'56 
(B9311slO)476 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


YC  51308 


249494 


I  hi 


